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Nobles
THE MAGAZINE OF NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL
SPRING 2015
The Accidental Pioneer
Nobles
SPRING 2015
PHOTOS OF THE DECADE
1975–1984
A Return to the Sea
Nobles
SPRING 2015
1985–1994
On the Front Lines
Nobles
SPRING 2015
1995–2004
A Rhodes? Nothing Special
contents
SPRING 2015
Prior to coeducation, Nobles boys
sat in rows of desks in what is now
known as Gleason Hall.
IN EVERY ISSUE
Letter from the Head
3Reflections
What Nobles folks are saying
on campus and online
2
4
The Bulletin
News and notes
12Sports
Another season of success
14Development
We are getting closer
16
2005–2015
Off the Shelf
All about the books we
read and write
20Perspectives
Girdles can be liberating
58
FEATURES
22Cover Story: The Fabulous 40
What happens when you just add girls?
56
Decades of Dedication
These are the faces of forces who’ve shaped our school
Cover photographs by Kathleen Dooher and Adam Komich
Graduate News
Nobles graduate updates:
what, when, where, why and
how Nobles grads are doing
82Archive
In the stacks: seniors get silly
Nobles
letter from the head
SPRING 2015
On Coeducation
FOR ONE YEAR I ATTENDED THE “OLD” NOBLES, the one that was
on this campus from the time the school left Boston in 1922
until the fall of 1974. There were three remarkable headmasters in those 52 years: Wiggins, Putnam and, at the end
for three years, Gleason. Then things changed. This change,
coeducation, was as momentous as the move out of the center of the city to Dedham and the Castle. And yet, through
this transition, the heart of the Nobles experience remained
intact. It is still true today. When 50th reunion classes from
the old Nobles come to visit every May, I believe that while
those graduates may have some trouble finding their way around new buildings, and while the
idioms of adolescence have shifted, they find the essential ethic of the school quite familiar.
In fall 1973 I arrived at Nobles as a new member of Class III, fresh from a large suburban coeducational public junior high school, landing on what felt like an alien planet. I remember nervously
finding my desk in the old study hall (a space we now call Gleason Hall), wearing my coat and tie,
thinking, “What have I done, tearing myself away from close friends and familiar patterns to come
to this serious, austere and thoroughly male place.” To be honest, I never quite felt at peace with
the single-sex Nobles, and I might not have come to the school at all had I not known coeducation
was right around the corner. And yet, from the start I was engaged in the classroom at Nobles,
motivated and inspired, developing important relationships with my teachers. Most notably in
those first months, I bonded with my advisor and biology teacher, the delightful Mary Wells (later
Mary Wells Sargent, after she married math teacher Manny Sargent), who was also new to the
school, hired for the role of “coordinator of coeducation.” She was a huge support, and we would
talk about what was to come in the following year.
Coeducation changed many of the rhythms and patterns of the school, but it enhanced its
soul. Under Ted Gleason’s leadership, Nobles was deeply committed to coeducation, and very
quickly (as compared to many institutions) the school moved to parity in numbers. The number
of women on the faculty and in administrative roles climbed a bit more slowly, but even in that
regard Nobles was a leader. Ceci Clark, for instance, became the first female athletic director in our
league. Nobles became a healthier, better balanced, more ambitious and more spirited community.
Still, the essence of Nobles remained the same; the commitment to a life of service to others, the
emphasis on relational pedagogy, and the expectation that students should fully engage in the
classroom and well beyond are as true today as they were in the school I attended in 1973.
It is a joy and a privilege to celebrate 40 years of coeducation at Nobles, especially as we
approach the sesquicentennial of the school. There are certainly still challenges with gender in our
community. After all, we mirror to an extent our general culture. I believe, however, that we continue to lead in regard to gender equality and associated issues. This edition of the magazine will
lend readers some insight into where we have been and where we are going. The ethos of Nobles
has been unshakeable through this process, and it is with genuine pride that I point to the Nobles
of today as a community dedicated to gender equity as the core of our commitment to diversity,
with a focus on attitudes, practices, culture and opportunities, all with the intent of developing
tomorrow’s leaders for the public good.
—ROBERT P. HENDERSON, JR. ’76, HEAD OF SCHOOL
Editor
Heather Sullivan
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
Assistant Editors
Kim Neal
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF
COMMUNICATIONS
Ben Heider
DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCER/WRITER
Michele Costa-Bell
WRITER AND DIGITAL
CONTENT MANAGER
Want to read more community musings? Go to www.nobles.edu/blogs.
You can also follow us on Instagram at instagram.com/nobleandgreenough.
It was a night to remember because
of the inspiring players, staff and families
from the Cotting School, and the enormous
outpouring of love and support from the
Nobles community.
—DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS ALEX GALLAGHER ’90,
AFTER THE ANNUAL GAME VERSUS THE COTTING SCHOOL
Design
2COMMUNIQUÉ
WWW.2COMMUNIQUE.COM
Photography
Tim Carey
Kathleen Dooher
Michael Dwyer
Ben Heider
Adam Komich
Kim Neal
Leah LaRiccia
Nobles Archives
Risley Sports Photography
The Editorial Committee
Brooke Asnis ’90
Greg Croak ’06
John Gifford ’86
Tilesy Harrington
Bill Kehlenbeck
Nobles is published three times
a year for graduates, past and
current parents and grandparents,
students and supporters of Noble
and Greenough School. Nobles is a
coeducational, non-sectarian day
and partial boarding school for
students in grades seven (Class
VI) through 12 (Class I). Noble and
Greenough is a rigorous academic
community that strives for excellence in its classroom teaching,
intellectual growth in its students
and commitment to the arts,
athletics and service to others.
For further information and upto-the-minute graduate news,
visit www.nobles.edu.
Letters and comments may be
emailed to Heather_Sullivan@
nobles.edu. We also welcome
old-fashioned mail sent c/o
Noble and Greenough School,
10 Campus Drive, Dedham, MA
02026. The office may be reached
at 781-320-7268.
© Noble and Greenough School
2015
The Nobles community seemed a lot
closer than my old school. Kids were
more inclusive and less likely to judge
you based on your interests....I’m given
a lot more responsibility at Nobles;
there’s no one hovering over me and
telling me what to do and when to do it.
The school lets you guide yourself and
make your own decisions.
— OLIVER CONSTABLE ’18, ABOUT HAVING
TRANSFERRED FROM ANOTHER
SCHOOL (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
IN THE NOBLEMAN ONLINE)
Like their children, parents, too, have been
conditioned to be resilient and learn quickly from
their mistakes. Each generation of Nobles parents,
challenged and aided by cultural shifts, continue
to move forward, and at their best welcome the
opportunity to be guided by their own children.
Within today’s culturally and technologically
complex world, present-day parents, like their
own parents who ducked and covered, seek to sift
through the latest flotsam and jetsam in hopes of
finding a common ground with their children that
will stand the test of time. To varying degrees, it
has always been that way.
—PROVOST BILL BUSSEY, NOBLES PARENTS’ NEWSLETTER
Mind wandering—also known as day dreaming and zoning out—usually has a negative connotation associated with it….Mind wandering is
when you are not fully engaged in a task and your thoughts are loosely
connected. This is when they say we are in our most creative state, so
mind wandering is a good thing. This new research is showing that
time when you are not consciously engaged in thinking about a specific
thing can actually be valuable toward what that specific goal might be.
—EXCERPTED FROM THE PODCAST
“THE STUDIES SHOW: MIND WANDERING,”
HOSTED BY GIA BATTY AND THE ACADEMIC SKILLS OFFICE
JANUARY 20, VIA INSTAGRAM
JANUARY 3
Nobles Girls basketball playing against
the Rivers School at the TD Garden
The Nobles Outing Club summited
Mount Chocorua via the Piper Trail
For some, the cold months signal a time to head
indoors and hibernate for a while. For others, winter
presents an incredible opportunity to get outside
and experience the beauty and wonder of nature.
—MATHEMATICS FACULTY MEMBER ERIC NGUYEN, NOBLES OUTING CLUB BLOG
2 Nobles SPRING 2015
SPRING 2015 Nobles 3
the bulletin
NEWS FROM OUR CAMPUS & COMMUNITY
Getting the Boot
Curtis Mann makes meticulous
incisions on reverse of a print.
Viewing Verso
Congratulations to Caroline Kinghorn ’19, whose ceramic work “Bean Boot” was
selected from among 1,409 entries for exhibition in March at the Annual National
K-12 Ceramic Exhibition in Providence, R.I.
“One of the hardest (and most exciting) parts of the assignment is that students
are asked to make mud look and behave like other materials that function very
differently,” says visual arts faculty member Lisa Jacobson.
“I chose to create a clay model of the L.L. Bean boot because I thought it would
only make sense to construct a shoe I wear almost every day,” says Kinghorn. “I
also wanted to choose a shoe made of leather. I wondered if I could replicate the
texture using clay.”
Jacobson says that Kinghorn was
extremely patient and methodical
while working on her project. She
explains how Kinghorn “tried to show
the gummy bumpiness of the sole and
the different kinds of smooth textures
in the leather and rubber on top of the
foot. Incidentally, in order to make
the exact texture of the sole, which
looks like a chain, Caroline made a clay
stamp of the design from her real shoe
and then used her stamp to imprint
into the sculpture.”
Marking its 18th anniversary, the
exhibition is a juried ceramic competition that “showcases the best K-12
ceramic work in the country.” The
jurors are selected from the top rank of
American ceramic artists, according to
the National K–12 Foundation.
IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, the Luce Gallery in Turin, Italy, featured the latest
pieces by visual artist and Nobles visual
arts faculty member Curtis Mann. Gallery manager Nikola Cernetic discovered Mann’s talent and fresh perspective
during the 2010 Whitney Biennial at
the Whitney Museum of American
Art. Mann, who earned an MFA from
Columbia College in Chicago, has had
solo exhibitions throughout Europe,
Asia and the United States.
“Nikola is passionate about and supportive of the work of contemporary,
emerging artists, especially those who
are experimenting with mediums and
exploring abstraction and materiality,”
says Mann of the collaboration.
The exhibit, Verso, which means
the reverse, back or other side of some
object, references the approach Mann
took in reversing large photographic
prints of the gallery and surrounding
areas so the printed image faced the
wall. He then meticulously cut hundreds
of tabs in the paper with a scalpel and
folded them back to reveal the images
in a way that could be described as a
modern departure from pointillism.
The image itself is deconstructed into
hundreds of points of color, and the
most holistic view only appears from the
side toward which the tabs open. The
assembly highlights
promote the upcom-
Cold-Blooded
Mass Audubon at the
Gathering the Goods
as part of their event
December Jazz/Blues/
version of “Knock
and includes a rhythm
Waffles for Sunshine
sale to benefit this
ing dance concert.
Nobles’ Environmental
Broadmoor Sanctuary
Students brought
singing at Immanuel
Drum Concert, the
on Wood,” fronted by
section of electric
Camp Sunshine
organization for chil-
Church in Boston.
Nobles Blues Band
Chris Desanges ’16.
and bass guitars,
volunteers, led by
dren with cancer and
performed a loyal
The band performs
keyboards, drums and
faculty member
their families.
A modern departure from pointillism
overall impression of each piece shifts
with the movement and perspective of
the viewer.
“I cut and altered photographs to
experiment with how one perceives
images and deals conceptually with their
physicality. The idea was to push and
push and push, until the image became
something more interesting and created
a larger dialogue,” Mann explains.
This was Mann’s third solo exhibition
at Luce Gallery; next he hopes to create
sculptural work that speaks to ideas in
photography.
—KIM NEAL
—MICHELE COSTA-BELL
Solid Gold
and a group of faculty
The troupe rehearsed
Action Committee
to bring her reptil-
in canned goods for
Clad in gold lamé
and staff unleashed
in secret to per-
(EAC) welcomed con-
ian friends for some
Nobles’ gospel group
vests, Jillian Grunnah,
their Dancing With
fect the surprise.
servation biologist Joy
close-up encounters
Imani to donate to the
Knock on Wood
rendition of Eddie
American blues music
percussion, a full horn
Lindsey Tonge, an-
director of dance,
the Stars moves to
Marzolf ’86 from the
with students.
Waltham Food Pantry
In anticipation of the
Floyd’s original 1966
from the past 60 years
section and vocalists.
nounced their waffle
the bulletin
Fiona Splaine ’15 examines
a prosthetic foot.
Engineering for Humanity
ON JANUARY 23, Robotics and Electron-
ics Design students were treated to an
exclusive behind-the-scenes look at
the M.I.T. Media Lab, thanks to Nobles
parents Larry and Dawn Weber (Geoff
’15, Hannah ’09, Julia ’11 ), who have a
longstanding relationship with the lab’s
co-founder and former director, Nicholas
Negroponte. Larry befriended Negroponte while helping engineers there market
their products. Now, Larry says, current
director Joi Ito and the robotics team are
developing solutions to pressing world
issues like education, water conservation
and hunger. “This is not just engineering
for engineering’s sake,” he says. “It’s engineering for the betterment of humanity.”
The focus of the visit was the Robotics and Prosthetics Lab. Recently, the
lab’s team of engineers helped Boston
Marathon bombing victim and ballroom
dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis realize her
dream of dancing again. “They incorporated neurological signals from the brain
connected with the prosthetic limb to
create legs that worked [via her] brain’s
commands. They are still perfecting the
project, but it is pretty amazing to see this
woman moving her legs just as she had
dreamed,” says Dawn.
Robotics and Electronics Design
teacher Dominic Manzo, who has been
fascinated by Legos and erector sets since
he was a boy, started offering Robotics
seven years ago and Electronics Design
& Engineering just this semester. He says
the trip to the MIT Media Lab introduces
students to the idea of what it would
actually be like to pursue an internship
or career in science, computer science or
engineering, and to have limitless opportunities to invent solutions.
“The students thought visiting the
lab was eye-opening and said they could
imagine working there. My goal is to
create a pipeline for them to explore engineering in college and possibly inspire
them to go into the field. It’s especially
rewarding to encourage more underrepresented groups, like female students
and students of color, to increase their
numbers in the field,” says Manzo.
ISRAELI AUTHOR SEEKS HONEST CONVERSATION
Ari Shavit, acclaimed Israeli columnist
and author of My Promised Land, spoke
at a long assembly on February 6.
Shavit acknowledged the complexity
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Too
many treat us [Israelis] as though we
are either angels or demons,” he said.
“We are humans. We are humans with a
rather remarkable, unique story.”
Shavit shared his family’s narrative—
the decision of his great-grandfather,
though successful, to flee the anti-
Semitism of late 19th-century London.
“They realized that there was no future
for us in Europe,” Shavit said. Israel
represented a safe haven for
Jews, whose population
was decimated by a third
between 1941 and 1945.
“We are an endangered nation and an
endangered species,”
he said. “While we live
on the edge, we live with
intensity.…Israel is a celebration of life.”
Of the ongoing conflict with Palestine,
Shavit said that Israel has done much
wrong—he opposes Palestinian settlements, for instance—but said that
his people want peace. “I want
Palestinians to have a free state.”
He said that the Middle
East as a region is in trouble.
“The tragedy of the region I
come from is that it fails to give
hope [to young Arabs].”
Healing Ferguson
Librarian Talya Sokoll had been following the story developments in Ferguson, Mo., after
the shooting of Michael Brown. She also checked in with the Ferguson Public Library.
With schools closed and families stressed, the library had become an ad hoc community
center, offering free Wi-Fi and lunches provided by Parents for Peace.
As the library began to gain attention for its community support, the staff there added
“how to help” information to its website, attracting more than $500,000 in donations as
well as about 2,000 books.
Knowing she had two weeks free for the winter holiday, Sokoll emailed the Ferguson
librarian, Scott Bonner, with an offer to help catalogue and process the incoming books.
“I wasn’t there for political reasons,” Sokoll says.“I knew that they needed help and
that I have a particular skill set that could help them. My faith as a Jewish person commands me to engage in Tikkun Olam, or helping to heal the world, and I felt a responsibility to use my skills to help their library.”
She acknowledged that she witnessed complicated race relations in Ferguson. “It had
definitely calmed down a bit, but it was still the first thing on people’s minds and something that was present everywhere I went.”
Sokoll’s work in Ferguson was supported by a faculty grant from Nobles. Her work
there was also featured on the Rachel Maddow Show on December 23, 2014.
Mittens, Snowflakes
individuals were
spend it on them-
annual Mitten/Snow-
toys to snow pants.
Families in Arlington,
and Brooke Strod-
lowing the grand jury
was not to condemn
like this country, just
presented a moving
Alzheimer’s. Her
and Stars
asked to spend a sum
selves. She encouraged
flake/Star Project. In
Approximately 300
and Self Help Inc. on
der, both ’15, received
ruling in Ferguson,
police, or even the rul-
leave,’” she said. “I say,
NED Talk describ-
message was to make
Community Service
of money on others,
the Nobles community
December 2014, Nobles
gifts were delivered to
the South Shore.
a standing ovation
Mo. De Los Santos
ing, but to make a pas-
change this country.”
ing the relationship
time to spend with
Director Sandi Mac-
they expressed greater
to experience that joy
fulfilled the wishes of
the Walker School in
after sharing why they
explained that her de-
sionate plea for basic
she had with her
those we love while
Quinn shared research
satisfaction than those
by sponsoring a gift for
more than 250 chil-
Needham, the Depart-
Call for Change
marched in recent
cision to participate in
human rights. “Some
Make the Time
late grandfather,
we can. NED Talks are
indicating that when
who were asked to
a child in need for the
dren, from Star Wars
ment of Children and
Genesis De Los Santos
Boston protests fol-
the nonviolent protest
people say, ‘If you don’t
Neha Bhambhani ’15
who succumbed to
Nobles’ own version of
the bulletin
Achieve
Wins Grants
One Voice
At an assembly before spring break, community service director
Sandi MacQuinn promised that the all-school, day-long community
service effort—Common Fire, on April 14—would not be extinguished by the snowiest winter on record. In true Nobles fashion,
the school would, she said, come together to serve the community
at 65 sites from Dedham to Boston and beyond—even the gardening projects would happen in some fashion, she said. To underscore
her conviction, she asked a collection of faculty members, led by
Bill Kehlenbeck (pictured), to cover Wailin, Jennys’ “One Voice.”
As MacQuinn predicted, Nobles rallied: Nearly 1,000 students,
faculty, parents and grads practiced leadership for the public
good at Habitat for Humanity, the Natick Community Organic
Farm, Walker School, Shattuck Hospital, Rosie’s Place, Riverdale
Elementary and many other locations.
INNOVATION STATION
Achieve is a Nobles-based, tuition-free
educational program that gives academic
support and social enrichment to 75 lowincome middle-school-age children through
an intense six-week summer program and
year-round academic tutoring and support.
The program, established in 2008
and under the direction of Nora DowleyLiebowitz, will expand and reinforce its
support of students, in part thanks to two
new grants awarded to the program.
A $10,000 grant from the Filene Foundation will support Achieve’s developing
graduate services programming, which will
assist students in the transition to high
school and offer guidance and counseling in
high school as students consider next steps.
The second grant, from the EE Ford
Foundation, will share $50,000 to support
teacher recruitment and training, contingent on Achieve independently
raising $250,000 for endowment by December 2015. “This
validation and recognition from
foundations that care deeply
about youth education—and
that also have incredibly high
standards—is a powerful milestone
for Achieve,” Dowley-Liebowitz says.
“We now have the tools to sustain students’ progress and help them continue
to be successful beyond the parameters
of the work they do with us. The effects on
individual students have the potential to be
profound—to be life-changing.”
In fall 2014, Nobles welcomed its first entrepreneurial speakers for its new Innovation Series. They included Laura D’Asaro and Rose Wang, founders of Six Foods, a
company that makes sustainable snacks from insects; Isaiah Kacyvenski, former
NFL player and director of MC-10, a wearable electronics company; and Adam
Melonas, co-founder and chef for Unreal Candy, an all-natural candy company. Jodi
Goldstein, director of the Harvard Innovation Lab (and a Nobles parent) moderated
the event. The series is the result of her collaboration with Nobles Chief Financial
Officer Steve Ginsberg and faculty member Scott Wilson.
Ginsberg and Wilson attended a conference in summer 2014 about teaching
entrepreneurship at independent schools. At the same time, they connected with
Goldstein. “She has been a great resource as we think about the program at Nobles,
and we look forward to using the Innovation Series as a springboard for future programming and possible coursework,” says Ginsberg. “Like coaching, the ‘teacher’
and students have to become comfortable with not knowing the exact direction in
which the learning will go. Skills like writing, public speaking, working with a team,
being resilient and knowing how to iterate when things change are directly linked
with this type of learning.”
Goldstein shared with students the mission of Harvard’s i-Lab—which is to foster entrepreneurship. “I’m excited to get your creative juices flowing, even starting
in the middle school, so you can start innovating in your own labs. I’m eager to bring
more programs and opportunities to work alongside inventors at the i-Lab.”
“After spending 20 years in the finance and venture capital industry, I’ve come
to appreciate the opportunities and risks of innovation and entrepreneurship,”
adds Wilson. “Part of my motivation for the program is to expose our students to those opportunities and risks. Unfortunately, most high schoolers
see themselves on a linear path with the end reward being graduation and
college acceptance. I hope one of the many by-products of this program
is that our students open themselves up to the unknown and explore
career paths that are totally unknown to them.”
Of the series speakers, he says, “Each is pursuing a business or
opportunity that they never knew existed when they were in high
school. It’s apparent that it’s OK, and may even be preferable, to take
the risk and pursue the opportunities inherent in small entrepreneurial ventures—that success in an entrepreneurial environment
takes the academic intelligence that Nobles fosters in our students as
a given, and that what is more important than their GPA is their ability to
think, problem solve, react to events, and be efficient and collaborative workers.”
—HEATHER SULLIVAN
—KIM NEAL
the popular TED Talks
Tribute to MLK
ering a historic slide-
of the struggle for free-
They Heart Everyone
all assembly-goers
Space” video, star-
Harthun and Sofia
Love Blooms
community purchase
Striding into the
injury sidelined her
series, which focus on
The Multicultural
show with a string
dom and justice that
The Student Life
with chocolates and
ring SLC presidents
Kinney, brought the
Campuses Against
roses to show their
Spotlight
for soccer season but
technology, entertain-
Student Association
ensemble arrange-
King championed, and
Council (SLC) and
handwritten valen-
Joelle Sherman and
house down.
Cancer promoted its
appreciation for one
As part of the NED
led to one of the most
ment and design.
presented a power-
ment, a performance
related news clips.
Calliope had everyone
tines at their seats.
Dana Grey, both ’15,
annual Valentine’s
another, with the
Talk series, Anna
nerve-racking and
ful tribute to Martin
by Imani, a modern
feeling the love
A hilarious parody of
created and produced
Day rose sale, where
proceeds supporting
Haigh ’16 shared the
rewarding experiences
Luther King Jr. by lay-
dance interpretation
when they surprised
Taylor Swift’s “Blank
by classmates Jessie
members of the
cancer research.
story of how an ACL
of her life, when she
the bulletin
Until Proven Innocent
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Studies estimate that 2.3 percent to
5 percent of all those incarcerated in the
two speakers from the New England
United States are wrongfully convicted.
Innocence Project (NEIP), a national
Leading causes are eyewitness misidentilitigation and public policy organization
fication, false confessions, government or
dedicated to exonerating wrongfully
law enforcement misconduct, improper
convicted individuals through DNA testforensic science and inadequate defense.
ing and reforming the criminal justice
At 23, Maher was a U.S. Army sergeant
system to prevent future injustice.
looking forward to decades of service to
Denise McWilliams, executive direchis country and a fulfilling family life.
tor of the NEIP, has built her 35-year
His plans were derailed on November 17,
career on social justice and providing
1983, when Lowell police apprehended
legal representation to disenfranchised
him because his clothing matched that
communities. Dennis Maher spoke
described by two rape victims. Maher was
about his experience as an innocent
initially put on probation when not idenman who served more than 19 years in
tified in a lineup, but police maintain that
prison before he was exonerated by
the victims identified him independently.
DNA evidence. His is one of only 325
In the nearby town of
cases of its kind to date.
Ayer, an unsolved rape
case was also pinned
Maher choked
on Maher, when that
up when he
victim identified Maher
recalled the
from a photo. Assigned
moment on
a trial lawyer who was
April Fool’s
later disbarred because
Day 2003, when
of his incompetence in
Kaplan asked
Maher’s case, Maher
him, “When
was found guilty.
do you want to
The prosecutor in
go home?”
the case, J.W. Carney
(known for his work
for client Whitey
Bulger), felt unsettled about the representation Maher had received. He urged
the Middlesex County public defender’s
Dennis Maher
office to appeal the case, but even then,
ON FEBRUARY 25, Nobles welcomed
Maher’s new lawyer was unsuccessful in
overturning the three convictions.
While in prison, Maher caught an
episode of Phil Donahue’s talk show featuring Barry Scheck, co-founder of the
Innocence Project, talking about using
DNA evidence to exonerate innocent
prisoners. Maher wrote to the Innocence
Project and felt new hope, but when
interns requested evidence from Middlesex County, they were told it was lost.
Aliza Kaplan, from Boston law firm
Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault, was assigned
to work on the NEIP, which was just
starting at her firm. Months of filing
motions and chasing leads led nowhere.
It was only when intern Karin Burns
befriended a courthouse clerk that the
“lost” evidence in Maher’s case was
uncovered in the courthouse basement.
It contained the DNA evidence that finally exempted Maher from both cases.
Maher choked up when he recalled
the moment on April Fool’s Day 2003,
when Kaplan asked him, “When do you
want to go home?” He has gracefully
turned to his future, actively choosing
not to be consumed by bitterness and
“what ifs.” He lives with his wife, Melissa,
and children Joshua (10) and Aliza (9),
who is named for the attorney he says,
“I can never repay.”
—KIM NEAL
Learn more: www.innocenceproject.org
just something I had
edged that the barrage
and grounds crew,
boarding school where
he said, because
the mainstage play—
to do for myself.”
of snow and tundra-
led by Mike McHugh.
he worked made do
it brought people
like weather this
Still, he likened it to
for four days without
together; he sees the
athlete but first-time
Blizzard Bonds
winter was trying, es-
the time when, during
power. It ended up be-
same closeness at
thespian, she said of
Head of School Bob
pecially the demands
the San Francisco
ing the best thing that
Nobles.
the audition, “It was
Henderson acknowl-
on the heroic building
earthquake of 1989, a
could have happened,
spell that enamors her of a bumbling mortal named Nick Bottom
(Tim Barry ’16), who has sprouted donkey ears thanks to Puck’s
wicked humor.
This production of Midsummer will be remembered for its dramatic sequences, but also for its ethereal musical arrangements
(Alasdair Mackenzie ’15) and performances, childlike acrobatics
of the fairy flock, slapstick interludes by the Mechanicals (farcical acting troupe to entertain Duke Theseus, Bianca Thompson
’15)—and the gasp-inducing, knock-down, drag-out girl fight
between Helena and Hermia.
Fortunately, omniscient King Oberon sees the havoc Puck has
wrought and bids him to set it right. In classic Shakespearean
fashion, couples are joyously reunited and married, and all’s well
that ends well.
—KIM NEAL
tried out for a role in
and got it. An avid
Vinik Theatre became a fairy forest and actors morphed into
sprites and Athenians for the original romantic comedy, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by faculty member
Todd Morton. Although this is the sixth production of the play in
Nobles history, students infused it with new energy through the
inventive use of light, brilliant music and spirited choreography.
Star-crossed lovers Lysander (Maxwell Halperin ’16) and
Hermia (Isabelle Walkey ’17) elope to evade her arranged marriage to Demetrius (Andrew Gord ’16). Hermia’s best friend,
Helena (Grace Scott-Hiser ’17), obsessed with Demetrius, alerts
him to the plan, and they follow. During a night of pursuit and
misplaced ardor in the woods, fairy mischief orchestrated by
Oberon, King of the Fairies (Bill Mizgerd ’15) and Puck (Monica
Alves ’16) precipitates a series of comic misunderstandings. Even
Titania, Queen of the Fairies (Liz Furlong ’15) is bewitched by a
ART CREDIT
sports
On the Playing Fields
ALPINE SKIING
BOYS VARSITY BASKETBALL
Girls Overall Record: 24-0 (ISL
Overall Record: 13-11
ISL Record: 8-7
All-League: James Mortimer and Alijah
Champions, 5th consecutive year);
NEPSAC Class A Championship
7th Place
Boys Overall Record: 26-14 (4th in
ISL); NEPSAC Class A Championship
4th Place
All-League: Nicola Katz ’16, Caley
Dickinson ’15, Lauren Barta ’15 and
Izzy Kocher ’18
Honorable Mention: Caroline
Patterson ’18, Sophia Kocher ’17 and
Colby Conley ’17
All-Scholastic ISL: Nicola Katz ’16
All-New England: Nicola Katz ’16,
Caley Dickinson ’15 and Colby
Conley ’17
Awards: James H. Bride Ski Bowl (for
enthusiasm, spirit and sportsmanship):
Caley Dickinson and Jordan Sandford,
both ’15. Coaches’ Award (for selfless
attitude and consistent effort): Lexi
Vocatura ’15, Nicola Katz ’16, Colby
Conley ’17 and Sonia Lingos-Utley ’17
2015 Captains: Maya Abouhamad,
Aiden Crawford and Nicola Katz, all ’16
Rue, both ’17
Honorable Mention: Justin Lynch ’15
Awards: Clarke Bowl (for contribution to
team spirit): Teddy Strzetelski ’15.
1983-’84 Basketball Award (for the
player who best exemplifies the spirit,
dedication, determination, attitude and
improvement of the 1983-’84 team):
Walker Jester ’15
2015 Captains: TBA
GIRLS VARSITY BASKETBALL
ISL Record: 12-0 (ISL Champions, 12th
consecutive year); NEPSAC Class A
Champions (4th consecutive year)
All-League: Katie Benzan ’16, Amy
Duggan ’16, Maya Finklea ’17 and
Alexandra Maund ’15
Honorable Mention: Julia Ford ’16
All-Scholastic ISL: Katie Benzan ’16
All-New England: Katie Benzan ’16,
Alexandra Maund ’15 and Amy Duggan ’16
League MVP: Katie Benzan ’16
NEPSAC MVP: Katie Benzan ’16
Awards: Seadale Bowl (given by the
Seadale family for overall contribution
to the basketball program): Alexandra
Maund ’15. Richard Nickerson Award
(in honor of the long-time coach,
awarded to a non-senior for courage and
determination): Katie Benzan ’16
2015 Captains: Katie Benzan, Amy
Duggan and Annie Blackburn, all ’16
BOYS VARSITY HOCKEY
Overall Record: 25-5-1
ISL Record: 13-1-0 (ISL Champions,
2nd consecutive year); NEPSAC Elite 8
quarterfinalists
All-League: Brendan Cytulik ’16, Billy
Sweezey ’15, Cody Todesco ’15, Mike
Fahie ’16 and Luke Stevens ’16
Honorable Mention: Billy Carrabino ’15,
Alex Hreib ’15, Pat Murray ’15,
Cam Burke ’17 and Danny Jacobs ’16
League MVP: Cody Todesco ’15
Awards: Todd Flaman Award (for the
JV player who demonstrates spirit,
Season Highlights
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
For a third consecutive season, all of the Girls Varsity
programs swept ISL Championships.
BV Hockey won their second straight ISL Keller division
title, and they earned the No. 3 seed in the NEPSAC
Division I Championships.
GV Squash won their third straight ISL title. They also
finished second in the New England finals and seventh
at Division 1 Nationals.
BV Squash won the Division 2 National Championship.
GV Hockey earned their 16th consecutive ISL Title.
■■
■■
■■
Martin Williams ‘16 earned a Graves-Kelsey Wrestling
Championship.
GV Basketball won their 12th straight ISL Title and their
fourth straight New England Class A Championship.
Girls Alpine Skiing earned their 10th ISL title in the last
11 years.
Finally, we had a wonderful girls basketball event with our
friends from the Cotting School, in front of a huge home
crowd, and winter teams collected hundreds of bags of
toiletries for the Common Fire event.
Caitrin Lonergan ‘16
Emma Roberts ‘15
GIRLS VARSITY HOCKEY
Overall Record: 24-3-2
ISL Record: 12-0-0 (ISL Champions,
16th consecutive year); NEPSAC Elite 8
quarterfinalists
All-League: Caitrin Lonergan ’16,
Bridget McCarthy ’16, Lucinda Quigley
’16 and Becca Gilmore ’17
Honorable Mention: Charlotte Abrecht
and Tess Dupre, both ’16
All-Scholastic ISL: Caitrin Lonergan ’16
League MVP: Caitrin Lonergan ’16
All-New England: Caitrin Lonergan ’16
and Becca Gilmore ’17
NEPSAC Division I First Team: Caitrin
Lonergan ’16 and Becca Gilmore ’17
Awards: Anne Dudley Newell Hockey
Cup (for dedication and excellence):
Shanna Hickman and Molly Slowe,
both ’15
2015 Captains: TBA
BOYS VARSITY SQUASH
■■
Martin Williams ‘16
enthusiasm and love of hockey as
exemplified by Todd Flaman ’97): John
Picken ’17. 1974 Award (for improvement
in hockey): Brendan Cytulik ’16. Sziklas
Hockey Trophy (for contribution to the
team): Sam Parizeau ’15
2015 Captains: TBA
Overall Record: 8-3
ISL Record: 6-3
Nationals: Division 2 National
Champions
All-League: Patrick McElroy ’18
and Reg Anderson ’17
Honorable Mention: Will Shadek ’15
Awards: Cutler Cup (awarded to
the member of the team who has
shown the greatest devotion to the
sport): Will Shadek ’15
2015 Captains: Reg Anderson ’17
and Ross Liftman ’16
GIRLS VARSITY SQUASH
ISL Record: 8-0 (ISL Champions,
3rd consecutive year); NEPSAC
Class A 2nd place
All-League: Gracie Doyle ’17 and
Emma Roberts ’15
Honorable Mention: Emily Woodworth
’16 and Alexis Lazor ’17
Awards: Cutler Cup (awarded to the
member of the team who has shown
the greatest devotion to the sport):
Emma Roberts ’15
2015 Captains: Emily Woodworth ’16
and Grace Doyle ’17
VARSITY WRESTLING
ISL Record: 8-4, 5th Place Team in
dual meet standings; 7th Place Team
at Graves-Kelsey Tournament
All-League: David Yeh ’18 (Graves-Kelsey
2nd place at 113 lbs) and Martin Williams
’16 (Graves-Kelsey Champion at 285 lbs)
Honorable Mention: Andrew Conway ’15,
Hayden Folgert ’16 (Graves-Kelsey 3rd
place at 182 lbs) and Michael Hazard ’15
(Graves-Kelsey 4th place at 195 lbs)
Additional Graves-Kelsey Place
Finishers: Clay Mizgerd ’17 (5th place
at 106 lbs), Christian Yeh ’16 (5th place
at 126 lbs) and Dakota Fenn ’15 (6th place
at 220 lbs)
All-New England: David Yeh ’18 (7th)
and Martin Williams ’16 (4th)
Awards: Warren E. Storer Award (for
hard work and improvement): Christian
Yeh ’16. Wilbur F. Storer Award (for the
most outstanding wrestler): Martin
Williams ’16
2015 Captains: Hayden Folgert and
Martin Williams, both ’16
Correction from the fall: Kate Carlton ’16 was awarded
Volleyball All-League Honorable Mention
development
The Be Nobles Bold Campaign
Exceeds $80M!
Thanks to the generous support
of the Nobles community, the
Be Nobles Bold Campaign has
exceeded $80 million, which
includes more than $30 million
raised for our endowment. The
growth of our endowment is
already making an impact, but
there is more work to be done.
We remain committed to further
strengthening the endowment to
ensure Nobles’ financial security
and, in turn, secure our bold
mission of inspiring leadership for
the public good. We look forward
to continuing to partner with you
on this campaign for Nobles.
REVENUES
WHERE WE ARE
DAY CAMP
7%
OTHER4%
ANNUAL NOBLES FUND
11%
ENDOWMENT13%
TUITION65%
Jen Lane ’88 was a dominant tennis
WHERE WE’RE GOING
DAY CAMP
7%
OTHER3%
ANNUAL NOBLES FUND
8%
ENDOWMENT20%
TUITION62%
HALL OF FAME CLASS WELCOMED
This year’s Hall of Fame Class features four individuals who each made
a lasting impact on the Nobles Athletics program. These excerpts provide
a preview of the induction ceremony, to be held on Reunion Day, May 9, in
Richardson Gymnasium.
Sarah Parsons ’05 enters the Hall of Fame
this year in her first year of eligibility. A
three-sport athlete, Parsons graduated
with 13 varsity letters (four in soccer, five
in ice hockey and four in lacrosse). She is
the school’s all-time leading scorer, male
captained all three teams and won the
Nobles Shield. In football, he played four
years as an offensive and defensive tackle
and was All-ISL during his junior and
senior seasons. Coach Steve Toubman
remembers: “He was the most coachable
athlete I’ve ever worked with. His ability
to make adjustments out on the mat was
remarkable.” Voldins went undefeated
in every match through his junior and
senior years. He would go on to row
for Harvard for four years, winning a
National Championship and competing
at the Henley Regatta before moving on
to compete with the U.S. National Team.
or female, in both soccer and hockey. At
18, Parsons was the youngest player on
the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, earning a
bronze Medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. She scored four goals
and three assists in five games, which
was the eighth highest point total in the
tournament. Parsons also played hockey
at Dartmouth, where she received the
college’s highest athletic honor, the Kenneth Archibald Prize, for being the “best
all-around athlete, of great academic
prowess and of high moral character.”
Didzis Voldins ’90 was a stellar three-
sport athlete at Nobles in football, wrestling and crew. In his senior year, Voldins
player at Nobles in the late 1980s. In her
three years on the varsity team, she was
largely uncontested on an individual
level while leading the team to several
ISL titles. She was ranked No. 1 in the
under-18 New England division during
her time at Nobles. Lane continued her
success at Boston College, where she was
inducted into the Varsity Club Athletic
Hall of Fame. At the time of her induction to the BC Hall of Fame, Lane was the
Big East record holder for most career
No. 1 flight titles.
From 1930–1971, Eliot Putnam served
Nobles in many different roles. While
he is remembered most for his nearly
three decades as headmaster, he also
served as the head coach of the football
team for 24 years. He coached undefeated teams in 1939, 1940 and 1951.
The 1951 team was inducted into the
Hall of Fame in 2010. Putnam was an
advocate for the concept of the scholarathlete. Head of School Bob Henderson
remarked: “Mr. Putnam used football
as a platform for turning boys into
men.” Putnam was a graduate of Milton
Academy and Harvard College, where
he quarterbacked the football team.
— GREG CROAK ’06
Happy Almost Birthday, Nobles
Nobles will celebrate its 150th birthday in 2016. Here are a few of the exciting
plans to commemorate the sesquicentennial:
■■ Joyce Eldridge, senior writer, is working on a book, In Their Voices, that will
highlight the past 50 years and will be published in a slipcover alongside a
new release of Richard T. Flood’s The Story of Noble and Greenough School,
1866-1966.
■■ Music Program Director Michael Turner is collaborating with Sam Forman ’95
on a new school song. The song will debut in fall 2015.
■■ Former Headmaster Eliot Putnam’s grandson, Jesse Putnam, has written two
stage plays about the Putnams’ children, Betsy and Arthur, who both passed
away at a young age during a particularly tragic year in Nobles history. Dan
Halperin, performing arts department chair, will direct the plays, which will be
presented here on campus December 19, 2015, at 2 p.m.
■■ In May 2016, the Class of 2016 will graduate as the 150th class of Noble and
Greenough School. Earlier in the month, Reunion Weekend will feature a full
slate of sesquicentennial events specifically for Nobles graduates.
■■ In September 2016, we will mark the anniversary of the opening of the school on
Founder’s Day. Students will participate in a day commemorating the school’s
past and looking toward the future.
■■ In November 2016, we will conclude the sesquicentennial with a memorable
Nobles Night.
We are honored to be serving as the co-chairs of the sesquicentennial, and we
look forward to celebrating this special milestone in the history of the school with
all of you in the Nobles community.
—BILL KEHLENBECK AND BROOKE ASNIS ’90
Eliot Putnam carrying the ball for Harvard
against Michigan in “The Big House”
(Michigan’s legendary home field)
off the shelf
Seeing One’s Truth Reflected
Young adult fiction helps teens see themselves—appreciate “the other.”
GIVEN MY PROFESSION, it will not surprise
you that when I was younger, I spent a
lot of time in the public library. I was a
voracious reader who, much like a teenage version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, tore
through my local library’s tiny young
adult (YA) literature section. In the
1990s, this section wasn’t much more
than a few spinning racks of Sweet Valley
High, Judy Blume and R.L. Stine novels. I
quickly moved on from those paperbacks
to “real adult literature,” which meant
Jodi Picoult and V.C. Andrews, because
in the ’90s, there wasn’t much else for
teens to read—certainly nothing like
what we see today, where the YA sections
of public libraries are vibrant spaces
filled with new and exciting literature.
The popularity of YA literature is
nothing new. Even before the rise of
Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger
Games, teenagers all over the world
turned to YA literature—literature written for an audience of 12- to 18-year-olds,
usually narrated by a teen—to reflect and
validate their own experiences, as well
as to discover new worlds and stories.
The term “young adult literature” was
introduced in the 1960s and “referred
to realistic fiction that was set in the
real (as opposed to imagined) contemporary world and addressed problems,
issues and life circumstances of interest
to young readers aged approximately
12–18.” While YA literature dates back to
the 1940s, as a genre it didn’t really pick
up until 1967, with the publication of The
Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton. YA literature’s
first heyday was in the 1970s and included
mostly realistic fiction by authors such as
Judy Blume, Paul Zindel, Robert Cormier
and Paula Danziger. These novels were
popular in part because they dealt with
issues that teens were facing, like drug
abuse, divorce, sexuality, teen pregnancy
and friendship. However, most of the
books leaned heavily on a moral message
and were didactic and preachy.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
the popularity of YA lit waned, but that
changed in the late 1990s, with the
publication of a series about a certain boy
wizard. The success of Harry Potter led to
another heyday of young adult literature. According to a Pew survey, 16- to
29-year-olds check out more books from
public libraries than any other group, and
the megasuccess of such series as Harry
Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight and
Divergent, as well as stand-alone novels
like The Fault in Our Stars, has led to YA
literature being one of the only genres
of the book industry that is consistently
profitable. Between 2011 and 2012, revenue for YA literature increased by almost
41 percent, while revenue for adult literature increased by only 8.3 percent.
While the popularity that YA enjoyed
in the 1970s is back in abundance, this
time the game has changed. Although
YA is still written for teenagers, books
published under the YA umbrella are
now meant to appeal to tweens as young
as 10 and adults as old as 25, not to mention the fact that millions of adults over
18, including me, consume the genre and
purchase more than half of the YA books
that are sold.
Partially a result of its ever-increasing
popularity, YA today is much more than
just the realistic, controversial “problem”
novels of the 1960s and ’70s. YA provides
accurate representations of teenage
life and is available in a wide variety of
genres, including fantasy and science
fiction, where teens face insurmountable
odds to achieve happiness, success and
safety. The thing that all these stories
have in common, according to David
Levithan, the author of our community
read Every Day, is that “teens want [to
read] things that...they connect with.”
According to the American Library Association, young adult literature serves two
important purposes for young people:
[First], to see oneself in the pages of a
young adult book is to receive the reassurance that one is not alone after all, not
other, not alien, but instead, a viable part
of a larger community of beings who share
a common humanity.
Another value of young adult literature
is its capacity for fostering understanding, empathy and compassion by offering
vividly realized portraits of the lives—
exterior and interior—of individuals who
are unlike the reader. In this way, young
adult literature invites its readership
to embrace the humanity it shares with
those who—if not for the encounter in
reading—might forever remain strangers.
This idea of YA lit as a window and a
mirror is what drives me as a librarian.
To be able to see one’s truth reflected in
that of popular fiction is invaluable to the
positive developmental growth of teens.
And to read and hear stories of those who
are not like us helps to foster empathy
and lead us down a path to truly do good.
In the Nobles community, we have three
graduates who are doing just that: using
their power as successful authors to give
voice to those whose stories might not
commonly be told.
KATHERINE R. BROAD
One of the recent trends in young adult
literature is dystopian fiction. Thanks to
the success of The Hunger Games series,
books that imagine “what the future
could look like once our unsustainable
lives cease to be sustained” (according
to John Green) are flying off the shelves.
This trend has even inspired academic
research, with numerous books being
written about aspects of this genre.
Katherine R. Broad ’01,
who earned a doctorate
in English literature, is
one of these researchers
and a contributor to the
recently published book
Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young
Adults: Brave New Teenagers, which
“offers a critical evaluation of the literary
and political potentials of [dystopian
literature.”] The book is a collection of
essays on topics including freedom, the
environment, biotechnology and politics,
and how they are examined in young
adult novels. This research is valuable
because it adds weight to the importance
of dystopian literature in the lives of
teens. As a recent article in Slate states,
“YA dystopias externalize the turmoil
that’s already taking place in adolescent
minds, hearts and bodies.” If teens are
looking for a mirror to their own experiences and struggles, then dystopias are
the perfect place to find them in a way
that may at first seem unrecognizable.
And Broad is helping with her stellar
contributions to the academic world.
SARA FARIZAN
Another recent trend in YA literature
are books that show representations of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) teens. Farizan ’03 is a popular
contributor to that trend, first with her
2013 novel, If You Could
Be Mine, and more
recently with the publication of her second
novel, Tell Me Again
How a Crush Should
Feel, in October. Both
books are about teenage
girls dealing with their sexuality, albeit
in different ways. If You Could Be Mine
focuses on two girls in love in Iran, a
love that is illegal there, and the choice
one makes so that they can be together.
Her second novel focuses on the experiences of Leila, a high school student who
is hiding her sexuality to fit in with her
classmates. What both of these novels
achieve, due to the skill and sensitivity
of Farizan’s writing, is an accurate and
thoughtful portrayal of the struggles and
successes that LGBT teens face across
the world. Historically, representations
of LGBT teens in YA literature have
been negative and stereotypical, but
Farizan, along with a number of other
voices in this emerging genre, manages
to break free of those stereotypes and
paint a picture that will be incredibly
validating to any LGBT teen, as well
as informative and accessible to those
who are interested in learning more.
COREY HAYDU
Similar to Farizan, Corey Haydu ’01
writes about teens going through experiences that will seem incredibly familiar
to some readers, and completely foreign
to others. Stacked Books says,
Pass [Haydu’s] OCD Love Story to
those readers who want a straight-on,
unashamed look at mental illness.
[...] In many ways, this book is scary.
It’s scary to experience the suffering
right along with a character in a way
that feels like it’s happening to you,
too. [...] It’s through this lens that the
book is so successful and powerful.
In the Winter 2015 issue of Young
Adult Library Services magazine, Diane
Scrofano writes on the recent rise in
young adult literature that deals with
mental illness:
Anyone who works [with 14- to 24-yearolds] can play an important role in getting
stories of mental illness out there and letting students [...] know they are not alone.
It’s important to help get the word out
that there is help available for those suffering from mental illness or those watching a family member or friend suffer.
[...] What’s exciting about the recent YA
literature of mental illness is that it treats
mental illness as a medical problem,
while a lot of older literature has treated
mental illness only symbolically, as “madness.” [...] We need books that mirror
teens’ experiences of clinical illness.
Former Dean of Students
Erika Guy always told
our community to “never
worry alone.” It can
be scary to experience
mental illness or to watch
a friend or loved one go
through that. In books like Haydu’s, we
can find a first step to giving hope.
—TALYA SOKOLL, LIBRARIAN
off the shelf
my books...
FACULTY MEMBERS SHARE THE BOOKS
THEY LOVED AS YOUNG ADULTS
Name: Marvin Vilma
Department: Admission/
Name: Muriel Schwinn
Department: Science teacher
Books: Rainbow Boys, Rain-
Name: Greg Croak
Department: Director of
diversity teaching fellow
Book: Giovanni’s Room
Author: James Baldwin
bow High and Rainbow Road
Author: Alex Sánchez
graduate affairs
Book: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Why it was meaningful:
This novel had a huge impact
on me for two reasons: It
complicates gender and
sexuality in a way that most
young novels do not, and I
admired Baldwin’s bravery in
writing a gay novel when his
primary readership during
the 1950s and 1960s was black
and homophobic. It was a
risky move, but he was not
afraid to challenge the norms
and think about social justice
through an intersectional
lens. Every time I look at the
world and see the injustices taking place, I reread
Giovanni’s Room to remind
myself that these challenges
are surmountable.
Name: Sandi MacQuinn
Department: English teacher
Book: The Once and
Future King
Author: T.H. White.
I loved fantasies and science
fiction, but this retelling of
the old Arthurian legend
was so funny and so insightful about what it feels like to
be on fire about something
important like peace and justice; it really spoke to me.
These were meaningful books
to me growing up because
they dug deep into issues
about homosexuality, tolerance and acceptance, which
were not well discussed or
supported in my high school.
Name: Heather Sullivan
Department: Director of
communications
Book: And Both Were Young
Author: Madeline L’Engle
While I also love her betterknown work, And Both Were
Young—a story of an awkward American who attends
a Swiss boarding school—
found me when I was very
definitely awkward and (very
sadly) not attending a Swiss
boarding school.
Name: Jodi McQuillian
Department: French teacher
Book: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Author: Betty Smith
It was the first time as a teen
that a book absolutely moved
me. That year for my birthday, all I wanted was the dogeared copy from the library.
It was a totally eye-opening
story about what’s truly
important in life: love,
beauty and the full range
of human emotion. I must
have read it 10 times.
Name: Margaret Robertson
Department: Spanish teacher
Book: Dicey’s Song
Author: Cynthia Voigt
Book: The Color Purple
Author: Alice Walker
Why they were meaningful:
Both rocked my world because
they were outside my reality.
Name: David Roane
Department: Art
Book: The Silmarillion
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
I was fixated on the maps and
would draw them.
Name: Gia Batty
Department: Academic
services
Book: Tiger Eyes
Author: Judy Blume
I had read all of her other
books, and Tiger Eyes was, to
CONTEMPORARY POETRY
BY JESSICA BRENNAN, ENGLISH FACULTY MEMBER
me, the most grown-up and
the most messed-up, and I
loved it. I remember reading the whole thing in one
afternoon circa 1982. Davey
Wexler’s dad is killed, and her
mom moves the family to New
Mexico to stay with an aunt.
Looking back on it, what I
liked was how, in the end, Davey moves back home and has
to get back to her old life, but
she is clearly so different. But
her old friends and boyfriend
don’t notice the change. They
don’t know how different she
is, how much more grown up
she is. Davey realizes it’s all on
the inside. It was just such a
real feeling to me, especially
as I was growing up through
middle and early high school.
Name: Tom Resor
Department: English
Book: Shane
Author: Jack Schaefer
I have always loved Westerns
(books and movies). My family has had a long association
with Jackson Hole, Wyo.,
since 1930, and I have spent
parts of my summers there
since I was 5. The movie
Shane was filmed in Jackson
Hole, so I had another reason
to read the book. Many years
ago, when I was teaching
seventh-grade English, I
taught the novel at Nobles.
Name: Kate Blake
Department: English
Book: Books by Christopher
Pike and Lois Duncan
They were my favorite
suspense reads growing
up. I distinctly remember
buying each Pike book
as it came out, getting
together with my friends,
and reading as a group, or
exchanging titles we hadn’t
read and reading silently.
Name: Robert Henderson Jr.
Position: Head of school
Title: One Is One
Author: Barbara
Leonie Picard
This story is about a young
man from a prominent
family in medieval England
who wants to be a knight.
However, he is sent away to
a monastery by his father
due to his perceived lack
of aptitude at chivalry. He
escapes and eventually
attains knighthood, but ultimately realizes that it is most
important for him to do what
he wants to do. This book
was really meaningful to me
as a teenager because it is all
about being totally yourself,
finding your own identity,
pursuing what’s important to you and not letting
people define who you are.
These are collections of poetry by contemporary
poets. These women write lines I return to again
and again. Robert Frost once wrote, “For me, the
initial delight is in the surprise of remembering
something I didn’t know I knew.” Repeatedly, these
poets unveil what I didn’t know I knew. These
writers prove that poetry is indeed alive and well.
WHAT THE LIVING DO, MARIE HOWE
Howe writes about grief as it seeps into the everyday. She grieves for a broken childhood,
a dead brother and fading wishes as she moves through her days. She has described these
poems all as love poems. While they may not feel that way upon first read, they certainly
grow into that—each story is rooted in love and appreciation.
WHERE YOU LIVE, JILL MCDONOUGH
Jill McDonough is about as real as it gets. She writes with a brave directness about everything: getting rear-ended near the Mass Ave. Bridge, teaching incarcerated students, falling
in love, staying in love, illness and ancient poetry. She writes with admirable ease, employing diction that is deceptively simple. Reading McDonough’s poetry is akin to listening to
a friend—a very strong, very thoughtful, very bold friend. Her voice is at once intrepid and
accessible: She is a poet who uses language to reveal our world with startling clarity.
HALF-LIFE, MEGHAN O’ROURKE
Meghan O’Rourke writes with a quiet intensity. Half-Life is a collection about coming of age.
The speakers in these poems are emerging, forming, and perhaps above all, observing the
world. While these poems often veer into dark territory, they never lose hope.
THE BEST OF IT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, KAY RYAN
The poet laureate from 2008 to 2010, Kay Ryan writes tight compact poems—she says
what needs to be said and no more. Her lines are short and direct, and her poems succeed
at shifting one’s perspective just enough to change everything. There is something offertory
in Ryan’s poems. She raises an idea, an observation, a small moment, and trusts the reader
to finish the thought. I am struck by how deceptively simple Ryan’s poems are. These short
lines, this direct diction, has real staying power. These poems can be understood on first
read, but they’re hard to read only once; they echo like the best conversations do.
LIFE ON MARS, TRACY K. SMITH
Largely an elegy for her father, this collection by Tracy K. Smith considers our place in the
world and the power of relationships by juxtaposing mundane everyday moments with the
cosmic images of space and science fiction. Smith does not attempt to answer questions or
solve the problems she identifies; rather, she illuminates the questions we need to ask.
perspectives
Nobles and the Girdle Effect
How Undergarments Reveal Humanity BY CARY BICKLEY ’78
T
here is a story I tell often
about my time at Nobles
that my children now
refer to as: “Not that damn
girdle story again!” However, since they’ve been schooled in Los
Angeles and are unfamiliar with Nobles
magazine, I’ll tell it one more time.
I was playing the role of Veta Louise
Simmons in the play Harvey. It was my
sophomore year, and it was a big deal
to me at the time because it was my
first really big part in a play, and by the
second or third rehearsal I’d already
dubbed myself an “actress.” My poor
unsuspecting parents…
During a rehearsal a week or so before
showtime, as I was making an exit after
my first scene, the director asked me to
tug my girdle before I went off stage. I
was mortified. “I’m not wearing a girdle!”
I said superloudly, so to everyone,
especially all boys present, it would be
perfectly clear that I was not wearing a
girdle. At the awkward age of 15, I was
struggling enough with the male species
without this added humiliation! He
responded that the audience didn’t know
that and it would be funny. I respectfully
disagreed and refused to do it.
All during dress rehearsals, I didn’t
do it. I didn’t want to be embarrassed.
It was just too risky, and I thought he
should really be a little ashamed for
asking me. Opening night, I’m out
on stage for the first time, feeling an
audience, their laughter, their grace,
and loving it. All the hard work, all the
nervous sick feeling before curtain,
went away as I discovered what all the
rehearsal was for. My big exit was coming, and I suddenly wasn’t afraid. And
as I hit my mark, I tugged the hell out
of my imaginary girdle, resulting in a
huge laugh.
It’s a simple moment, but it became
my guiding principle, and not just in my
years on stage. I learned to put myself
out there. In the classroom it was raising
my hand and speaking up, even sometimes when I wasn’t sure. As a budding
writer, I was working on the Nobleman under the brilliant tutelage of Joe
Swayze, and I had the less-than-brilliant
idea to put out a Nobles Enquirer. Somehow I persuaded poor Mr. Swayze to
allow me to do it. I don’t have a copy, but
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t all that funny.
But I did it. I wrote jokes and put them
out there for criticism, and ultimately,
“In comedy especially, I’ve always felt that what audiences
respond to is the moment where the actress/writer/singer/
dancer shows their girdle, i.e., their humanity, their flaws,
their inner secrets.”
—CARY BICKLEY ’78
as things turned out, I became a writer
rather than an actress.
In comedy especially, I’ve always
felt that what audiences respond to is
the moment where the actress/writer/
singer/dancer shows their girdle, i.e.,
their humanity, their flaws, their inner
secrets. But to show your underbelly is a
risk. I believe that to succeed in any field,
you have to take that risk. It’s easy to see
the risk of the writer or the actor, but
watch Shark Tank and realize everyone
who invents and innovates and creates
businesses is to some extent putting
their inner self out there. They are risking their futures and financial wellbeings on some product, dream or idea.
Watching them do it, I feel the tug.
Personally, every time I write something and give it to someone to read, I
still have to brace myself for rejection.
I’ve had tons of it. So much it would
make you cry. I’m crying a little right
now thinking about it. And it never ends.
Despite some real career highs, I still
face rejection all the time. But somehow,
despite it all, I keep tugging that girdle,
because when I get it right, when someone finally says yes, or when I get that
laugh, it’s totally worth it.
Cary Bickley ’78 in her yearbook
picture. Below, second from right,
she becomes an “actress.”
Cary Bickley is a writer and mother
of three living in L.A. Her screen
credits include The Gun in Betty Lou’s
Handbag, High Crimes, Take My Life
and Spinning Boris. She has had articles
published in Glamour, Brides, Taxi,
Wondertime, Family Fun and the
Christian Science Monitor.
Celebrating
40 Years of
Women and
Coeducation
at Nobles
the
FABULOUS
IN FALL 2015, Nobles will begin its sesquicentennial celebration. Thank you, George
Washington Copp Noble, for founding a
remarkable school in 1866. Many Nobles
magazine readers owe much knowledge, joy
and occupation to your energy and ambition.
A more recent milestone came in the
1974–75 academic year, when, under the
leadership of Headmaster Ted Gleason
and Board President Robert Lawrence ’44,
Nobles transitioned from a boys’ school to a
coeducational school. Sept. 18, 1974, marks
the moment when 84 young women became
Nobles’ first female students. And what a
difference the women have made.
Full disclosure: A lot of remarkable
people—men and women—have contributed to what Nobles has become since that
bold decision. Here we claim only to capture
a suggestion of the significance of that historic decision and its implementation. So we
are missing about 7,381 or so relevant and
related stories. (If you think they are ones
we should cover soon, send the magazine
staff a note at communications@nobles.edu.)
By sharing 40 facts, stories and people
profiles, we recognize and thank George
Washington Copp Noble, Ted Gleason,
Bob Lawrence and those who came after
and in between, who shaped a place that
inspires women and men to give their best.
the FABULOUS 40
GIRLS RULE
2015 marked the third consecutive year in which all four
girls varsity winter teams won ISL championships.
1
T I L E SY H A R R I N GTO N
“Senior Mistress” of Nobles
Tilesy Harrington jokes with Nick
Nickerson—who as the longest-serving
full-time faculty member is known as
the “senior master”—that if he is senior
master, why is she not officially designated as “senior mistress”?
When Harrington—then Tilesy
Rivera—joined the faculty in 1977, she
was one of just 13 female faculty members. She was also the first female faculty
member of color—and a 20-year-old
new Harvard graduate who rowed crew.
“It was weird,” she says. “I had no
doubt that Nick and Bill Kehlenbeck
knew that I knew what I was doing—
but I felt like the little sister. What
happened is I became really tough. I
was trying to prove that I was rigorous.
At that time, the male world was the
teaching world, and the female world
was the staff world.”
Harrington said that when she and
Mark, who joined the classics faculty in
1976, became engaged, they figured
one of them would have to go. They
were in an era when the wives of faculty
members refrained from public appearances when a pregnancy began to show—
and rarely had a married couple both
taught full time at the school.
“Ted went to bat for us,” Harrington
says. “He told the board that we were
both good teachers and that he wanted
us both to stay.”
When Dick Baker became head, the
evolution continued. He appointed
both Tilesy Harrington and Deb Harrison, who joined the faculty in 1981, as
academic department heads. (The first
female department head was Helen
Twiss in 1973.)
“All of this was new territory,”
Harrington says. “Debbie and I opened
doors.”
Harrington says that in some ways,
the early days were the Wild West. She
2
considered changing careers in the
’80s, when she had small children, but
the school’s support for her to attend
a Simmons College program kept her
close. At Simmons, she began to develop
a discrete math course, which expanded
Nobles’ quantitative offerings.
The three Harrington children, Kate
’00, Michael ’03 and Bo ’08, grew up in
the Castle with their parents. All three
children are teachers. “We could open
our own school,” Harrington laughs.
Harrington has many stories to
tell and remembers when faculty
wives—who were not employees—were
nonetheless expected to host teas. She
says that longtime former Dean of
Students Erika Guy made a big difference. “She dealt with a lot of gender
issues. All of us were growing out of
the ’50s June Cleaver era and into the
’80s,” she says.
—HEATHER SULLIVAN
the FABULOUS 40
JOAN ALKER ’81
[EXCERPT FROM PRIZE DAY SPEECH, JUNE 11, 1975]
Advocate for Women and Children
Joan Alker is executive director of the Center for Children and Families,
and for the past 12 years she’s been a research associate professor at the
Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. Her work focuses on
health coverage for low-income children and families, with an emphasis
on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable
Care Act. She spoke with Heather Sullivan, director of communications,
about her life and work.
How did you come to work on behalf
of mothers and children?
I went to Bryn Mawr, a women’s college.
I studied political science in college and
then went to Oxford University for a
master’s of philosophy in politics.
I was always interested in political
change, and my parents were both professors of international relations. I lived
abroad growing up, so I probably saw
myself more involved from an international perspective.
I got my first real job at the National
Coalition for the Homeless. That work
opened my eyes to poverty in the
United States. In addition to working
with homeless people in D.C., I traveled
around the country and visited shelters,
and that was sort of it for me. I’ve worked
ever since at the intersection of poverty
and issues affecting low-income families.
Some people forget so many families
close to home need help.
Yes. Once I rolled up my sleeves and saw
what was really going on in this country,
I knew there was no other path for me.
What are some common misconceptions
about families who struggle with poverty?
People [often] say, “Oh, well, homeless
people are all mentally ill, or they have
a substance abuse problem.” Well, there
are plenty of upper-income people who
3
have mental health challenges or substance abuse problems, but they don’t
live on the street, so we don’t see those
problems as publicly.
Why are you focusing on health
care specifically?
I work on health care for low-income
children because if kids don’t get a good
start in life, it’s going to be really hard
for them to catch up as adults. We have
a lot of powerful economic interest in
our health-care system. We have the
insurance industry. We’ve got doctors,
hospitals and drug companies. Our work
at Georgetown is to push for better public policy from the perspective of what’s
going to work for low-income families.
You speak about and write about
preventative health care and its
relationship to insurance for children.
Can you clarify the connection?
There are two primary reasons that it’s
so important for families to have health
insurance. First is to be able to access
needed preventive and primary-care
health services. For kids, that means getting their recommended well-child visits
and access to prescriptions and other
basic primary care.
The second really important piece
about having health insurance is that it
provides an enormous amount of financial security. Medical debt is a leading
cause of bankruptcy.
If obstacles to health-care access
disappeared, what systemic changes
might help the most?
Kids, in theory, should all have a path
to coverage. Most uninsured kids
are eligible for public coverage but
may not be continuously enrolled.
Some aren’t—usually because of the
immigration status of their fami-
lies. But it’s a complicated stateby-state system for families.
If we were able to move to a [federal] system like we have for Medicare
tomorrow—this is not politically feasible, but I’m waving my magic wand—
every newborn would also get enrolled
in health insurance, just like today,
when you turn 65, you’re enrolled
in Medicare. That would be huge.
Your sisters also went to Nobles, right?
My sister, Heather ’84, became a
doctor. She was a science person and
became an ob-gyn, but she retrained
recently in preventive medicine and
got a degree in public health. She’s
approaching it from a clinical perspective, but our work has gotten closer
over the years. My youngest sister,
Wendy ’88, is a professor of performance studies at NYU.
What are you most pleased or frustrated
about in relation to your work?
As a country, we’ve made great strides
in reducing the number of uninsured
children. Over the past 10 years
we’ve reduced the rate of uninsured
children to 7 percent. That’s an
historic low. We can succeed when
we focus on something and work
on it in a bipartisan way. I think it is
troubling right now that we are in a
period of such intense politicization,
particularly about health policy.
What keeps you motivated, despite
the obstacles?
I think there’s a lot of poverty in this
country. Children, in particular, live in
conditions that really shouldn’t happen
in such a rich country. That’s sort of my
motivation in all of the work that I do,
is to do what I can and engage in this
larger discourse.
It seemed so unfair that I had
been born a girl, because the
only school I wanted to go to
was Noble and Greenough.
Of course, it was out of the
question. But dreams are what
make life bearable, so I went right on dreaming.
Then about three or four years ago, I heard that
Nobles was going coed. It was unbelievable, but
it was true. So I quickly sent in my application
and received a letter from Mr.
Gleason thanking me for applying
and telling me that I would hear
more details later. Well, I did, but
they were not the details that I
wanted to hear. I soon learned
that Nobles and Winsor were
planning on merging, and that
only Winsor girls were able
to apply….Then one wonderful
day, I heard that Nobles and
Winsor were not going to
merge….Well, here I am now standing before you
on this historic day. My dream did come true,
and just in the nick of time. But little did I know
that I was the first girl to accept a place in the
school, let alone in the senior class....I just wish
I could have spent more than one school year
here, but I feel very lucky to have had one.”
4
—LAURIE YOUNG PEDZEWICK ’75
First Girl to Accept Offer of Admission at Nobles,
First Girl to Speak at a Major Event
5
WHO’S THE BOSS?
Every male on the faculty—including Head of School
Bob Henderson ’76—reports to at least one woman.
ERIKA GUY
Because
She Is Erika
6
“Quite simply, the Guys have modeled what it means to
be ‘school people,’” said Head of School Bob Henderson
when Erika, longtime dean of students, and Doug, a
member of the math faculty, decided to leave Nobles in
2013 after more than 25 years of service.
English faculty member and former head of school
Dick Baker said that Erika hugely elevated the level
of care for students’ emotional well-being at Nobles.
“What I saw in Erika initially was a balanced and very
stable personality, someone who was not easily rattled.
She never needed to boost her own stature at the
expense of someone else,” Baker said.
During her tenure, Erika coached soccer, taught
aerobics, and started an organic garden and community
cooking classes. Henderson called Erika “a critical
force in envisioning, building and sustaining this
community.…The essence of her responsibility [was]
always a simple one: Improve the quality of the Nobles
experience for every student.”
Upon leaving Nobles, Erika said that she recognized
how difficult adolescence can be—thus her mantra,
“No one should worry alone.”
“Erika is fearless,” said Provost Bill Bussey. “This
school would not be what it is without her.” Several
generations of Nobles grads would agree.
—HEATHER SULLIVAN
MARGARET BOWMAN ’80 AND ELIZABETH SODERSTROM ’80
This Is Water
Visionary is not a term to be thrown
about lightly, but listening to Elizabeth
Soderstrom ’80 and Margaret Bowman ’80 speak, there is no other word
to describe their passion for learning,
problem-solving, exploring myriad ways
of seeing and understanding the world,
and constructing sustainable and peaceful models for living in it.
Their credentials are impressive.
Currently a program director at the
Resource Legacy Fund, Soderstrom
holds a bachelor’s in English literature,
a bachelor’s and master’s of science in
biological sciences from Stanford, and a
doctorate in Wildlands Resource Science
from UC Berkeley. A Switzer Fellow,
her résumé includes projects in Borneo,
Africa, and work with American Rivers, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and the U.S.
Department of State. Bowman is deputy
director for the Walton Family Foundation’s Environment Focus Area, overseeing their freshwater conservation work.
She earned a bachelor’s from Wesleyan
and a law degree from Harvard, where
she was managing editor of the Environmental Law Review. Her résumé includes
work in Central Europe, and for nonprofits, private foundations and law firms in
the United States.
Both remember their days at Nobles
well. They were the only two women
in an advanced calculus class, their
friendship forged there would extend
through their lives.
Soderstrom remembers her time at
Nobles as a time when questioning was
encouraged, “when teachers like Tim
Carey and Dick Baker pushed students
to look at the cracks and inconsistencies
in narratives.” One inconsistency in the
coeducational narrative Soderstrom
found was the absence of many women
in the teaching ranks, leading her to pen
an editorial in the Nobleman called “Co-Educating
the Educators.” Dick
Baker’s motto of “teaching
as a subversive activity”
would be life-changing,
and Baker would remain a
lifelong friend, and later be
ordained for a day to preside
over her wedding, which
Bowman would also attend.
For Bowman, it was
John Paine’s history class
that was transforming. “He never taught
wars in the traditional sense. He taught
us the causes and results of wars and
said the battles didn’t matter—sending
a subtle but important message not to
glorify war.” Playing basketball for Nick
Nickerson and working as a theater
lighting technician were opportunities for stretching herself. “It was a
culture that emphasized the importance of giving back, of making changes
in people’s lives,” she remembers.
Soderstrom and Bowman bring
that culture to their work. Both currently work to address the growing
water crisis in the Western United
States in a way that protects not only
communities but also rivers and
wetlands. With rivers flowing across
borders and communities with diverse
economic and cultural connections,
navigating water rights requires a
complex set of technical as well as
human skills to bring about change.
For Bowman, that has meant supporting institutions and people with the
skills to negotiate legal and traditional
rights between water users, states, and
the United States and Mexico, in order
to allow an experimental “flood” into the
dry Colorado River in Mexico, allowing the river to flow down its entire
length for a few weeks in 2014. She
speaks with passion
for the work with these
communities and the
result of “seeing a river
come back to life.” A
tweet sent from that
7+8
moment shows a photo of two young
boys in Mexico walking up a dry riverbed, their faces turned toward a rush
of blue water flowing downstream
toward them. The caption reads: “Meeting their river for the first time.”
For Soderstrom, the task has meant
living four years in Africa, working with
three separate countries, resolving water
issues along the banks of the Okavango
River, building the Tribute Trail along
the banks of the Deer Creek in her hometown, and living faithful to her Buddhist
practice—“hands on the land”—on 25
acres with her family, eight goats and
roaming chickens.
Bowman describes this practice of
working and living in this world as one of
moving interchangeably “from actor to
director to producer,” from “having the
view from the ground to having the view
from 30,000 feet up.”
The word compassion is one Soderstrom brings up, pointing to it as a
necessary ingredient in working to bring
about “a vision not based on restriction
and sacrifice, but a sustainable future in
which we would all want to live.”
In a time when access to and control of
water resources have become flashpoints
for conflict, Soderstrom and Bowman are
our visionaries—our pioneers.
—KEVIN BOWEN
9
the FABULOUS 40
[HEADMASTER’S MESSAGE, 1975 YEARBOOK]
CECI CLARK
Faculty Member, Coach
and Administrator
Ceci Clark was hired to teach English in 1977 and later became the assistant athletic director (AD). When the school needed an interim director,
Ted Gleason looked to male faculty member. Clark objected.
How did you respond to Ted Gleason’s
plan to fill the AD vacancy?
I was the assistant, and I thought to
myself, “Wait a minute. You’re just going
to pluck a guy out of coaching and teaching and put him in a job for which I have
every ability to temporarily take over?
No. Not happening.”
It wasn’t like it was my dream to be
the athletic director, but I felt it was the
moment—a small moment—for Nobles
to do this. And so Ted Gleason, to his
credit, said okay, and I became, just for
two years, the first female athletic director in the ISL.
What was the job really like?
It was my finest and worst moment,
because I actually didn’t want the job,
but I wanted it for Nobles. I didn’t get
any more money, by the way. I just had
to be the first person at school, the last
person out. Everything that went wrong
was my fault: the weather, the referees,
the outcome of the game, the buses that
broke down.
How do you feel about the direction
Nobles has taken toward coeducation?
Nobles did all the right things to become
something it deliberately planned to
become. There was nothing accidental
about what Ted, Henderson, Baker and
the trustees have done for the school. It’s
been smart. It’s been interesting. Girls
are very much at the heart of its success,
and adding young women of this kind of
substance as students and as teachers has
certainly changed the equation of Nobles.
There are some teachers and people
in my life to whom my highest compliment is to say, “You’re kind of like a girl.
You have the heart of someone who
cares really, really deeply and isn’t afraid
to show it.” I think men care as deeply,
but they don’t always show it. At Nobles
there were some people very attuned to
what girls needed—like the Tim Careys, Nick Nickersons and Mark Harringtons—and were very pleased to be
teaching girls and to be growing in ways
as a teacher that you grow because you
have a gender-equal classroom.
What are your lasting impressions?
My memories of Nobles are so sharply
affectionate. I thank goodness that it was
the place where I felt like I developed
as a teacher and had amazing mentors,
male and female, and very good friends.
I’m a continual admirer of what Nobles
has become. Having been years in
schools, the magic happens in personalities. It’s not gender. Do you have the
right individual leading with heart and
understanding and developing those kids
in appropriate ways, or do you not? And
once the answer is yes, it doesn’t matter
whether it’s a girl or a boy.
—BEN HEIDER
Years hence, when all of us are long dead, someone
will sit down to write the history of the second
hundred years of Noble and Greenough School. And if
that person be wise, he or she will wish to know more
than a little of that special First Class that ushered in the
new era at Nobles. It will be the Class of 1975. One perceptive member of
that class said to me not long ago, “When I think of how our class came to
be, I think of an admissions officer sitting down and saying, ‘Whom shall I
pick to construct the perfect class?’ and we were created.”
He was not far from wrong. It has been and is an unusual group, most
unusual in the ability to provide significant leadership in a period of
transition, in a time when so many things could not have happened, only
they did, a time when Nobles could have fallen short, but it did not.
The tone of any school year is set by the First Class. This year,
we have done much of timeless significance, and the credit
should be offered where credit is due. We could not have done
any of it—not a bit—without the Class of 1975. May you be
proud, may you be memorable, may you always matter as you
have mattered at Noble and Greenough.
10
—TED GLEASON, HEAD OF SCHOOL, 1971–1987
J E D D AW S O N ’ 7 5
When the Girls Arrived
I grew up in a family of all boys. I went to a coeducational primary
school, Charles River, in Dover, and I don’t remember girls. That was a
long time ago. But returning to Nobles as a senior and having women
on campus was like going from black and white to color. Whoa. Now
we had women.
I hadn’t realized I was living in a black-and-white world. When we
were here, we had coats and ties, and we had desks that were nailed
to the floor in Gleason Hall. I sat next to Bob Delaney and Hank Davis.
Everything was in little straight rows. The women came, and all of a
sudden the desks went away. Things opened up. It was just a much
more vibrant experience.
The teachers at this school make the school, not the buildings.
One of the emotional parts of graduation is when the faculty members line up and the kids all go through, single file, thanking every fac-
11
ulty member. There is not a dry eye in the house for parents watching.
The best education of my life was the six years I spent at Nobles.
We sent five kids here, too, and their experience was as great.
—AS TOLD TO HEATHER SULLIVAN
the FABULOUS 40
CO R A H I DA LG O H O L L A N D
CAROLINE HASKELL ODDEN ’93
Sifting Stars
High
Honors
Each year, before the school year
starts, Nobles presents a staff member with the Cora Hidalgo Holland
award. The award honors Nobles
parent Cora Hidalgo Holland,
who demonstrated a kindness and
warmth to the entire community at
Nobles. This recognition is awarded
annually to a Nobles staff member
who contributes to the community
through excellent work, character
and dedication.
Hidalgo Holland P ’97 ’01 is
remembered as a dedicated supporter of the Nobles community
who volunteered her time in various
capacities such as student activities,
fundraising and parent programs,
while two of her three children
attended Nobles: Jessica and Nate
Holland. Hidalgo Holland was
well-known for her attention and
appreciation of staff members. In
the Spring 2003 Nobles Bulletin,
she was described as someone “who
worked graciously and supportively
with our maintenance staff, our
kitchen staff and our administrative staff—all the folks who dedicate
so much of their lives to ensuring that Nobles runs smoothly.”
12
—MICHELE COSTA-BELL
LAURA PUTNAM
13
A Woman Ahead
of Her Time
The daughter of Nobles second headmaster, Charles Wiggins II, and the wife of its
third, Eliot Putnam, the late Laura Wiggins Putnam was the quintessential female
presence on campus for half a century, from 1922–1971.
She was the person who served “good night” treats to boarders and on-campus
teachers, as well as the hostess who delighted trustees and faculty at social gatherings in the years before coeducation. “A nice hot cup of tea seemed to be just the
thing after coaching,” she was quoted as saying.
She may seem prefeminist in some of her roles, but she actually fulfilled duties
that would be compensated today. In fact, some have been institutionalized into
full departments. As the unofficial school counselor, she offered a sympathetic ear
and an insider’s perspective to boys troubled by some aspect of their Nobles life.
She was also the first person to teach art—an extracurricular rather than an academic offering—on the Nobles campus. One of her most illustrious students was
the late James Wood ’59, who went on to serve as the director of the prestigious Art
Institute of Chicago and of the international Getty Foundation and Museum.
Not unlike other faculty and students of her era, Laura Putnam came from
a remarkable lineage. She was the great-granddaughter of Julia Ward Howe,
herself a women’s rights activist, who wrote the words to the “Battle Hymn of the
Republic” and “John Brown’s Body.” Putnam’s maternal grandfather, Dr. Samuel
Gridley Howe, was the first director of the Perkins School for the Blind. Her father,
who became head of Nobles in 1920, was trained as an architect at the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris and designed Nobles’ “Brick Cottage” for daughter Laura and
son-in-law Eliot Putnam.
—JOYCE ELDRIDGE
Sometimes it’s not the objects you
first bring into focus, but the ones surrounding them, that prove the most
interesting.
As director of the Phillips Academy
Observatory at Andover, where she also
teaches physics and astronomy, Caroline Haskell Odden ’93 has experienced
this firsthand. Whether describing her
academic choices, what “real science”
means to her or the kind of research
she conducts with her students, Odden
derives meaning from the surprises.
It was not at Nobles, but at Yale,
that Odden took her first physics class.
She thought she’d major in math but
altered her course when she found
that physics piqued her enthusiasm
even more. “The very solid calculus
foundation that I had, thanks to Bill
Kehlenbeck, carried me through many
courses in college that other people
found really challenging,” she says.
Odden describes her high-school self
as a generalist who pursued English, art
and band with the same energy as math,
her favorite subject. Nobles teachers
Kehlenbeck, Vicky Seelen, Mark Harrington and Bob Kern inspired Odden.
Indeed, she spent four years teaching
at Westminster School in Connecticut,
which cemented her calling as an educator, and in 2001, she joined the physics
faculty at Phillips Academy, in Andover.
Odden’s skyward trajectory began
with the launch of the Phillips Academy
Observatory in 2004, where she was
named director. She was also asked to
teach astronomy, a field new to her. “I
studied the textbook and stayed one step
ahead of the students,” she says. “Over
the course of several years, with the help
of friends who were more experienced
than I was, I learned how to use the
observatory and developed what is now
a pretty vibrant research program.”
PHOTO BY KIM NEAL
Now, as a mentor and teacher for
the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive
Research Program (NITARP), she is
part of a faculty-student team that
includes Nobles’ own physics faculty
member David Strasburger. Strasburger
learned of the program through Odden,
and he was accepted at the same time
she was invited back as a mentor.
Odden loves viewing the night sky
through the powerful telescopes at her
observatory and conducting firsthand
research, but she
explains that many
significant astronomical
findings rely on mining vast repositories
of preexisting public
data—the basis for her
NITARP research.
Together, teachers
and students on the
intramural research team are examining data from public archives to identify
potentially interesting astronomical
objects, specifically ones that exhibit
extreme infrared excess. Those objects
may then become worthy of study using
the coveted world-class telescopes.
Odden finds that her students thrive
on authentic research experiences.
While many high-school science courses
include important laboratory work,
“students are given a set of instructions in which they are told what to do
to arrive at a particular result. In real
science, scientists develop a question, then identify a process and move
toward an answer.
Sometimes the result
is different from what
they set out to learn.”
In presenting and
publishing their work for
NITARP, Odden’s
students broaden
their horizons
and bring forward
their best, gaining
confidence for college
and beyond. They also develop relationships with professional astronomers
whom they can approach with questions
throughout the course of their research.
Students who enroll in her popular
astronomy course are already interested in the sciences. But what about
those for whom it is less of a draw? “It’s
really important to educate as many
people as possible in math and science, even if they don’t end up having
related careers. They’re voting. They
might be in a position where they have
some influence,” she says. “Having
some level of education in math and
science is valuable for everyone.”
Odden tells her astronomy students,
“This is information you’ll appreciate
knowing for the rest of your life. It’s nice
to have some sense of where you fit into
the universe, what’s out there and how it
all started.”
14
caption
—KIM NEAL
E L L E N M E C R AY ’ 8 6
Beyond the Sea
“I bet it was a surprise to Mr. Sculco or
Mrs. Harrison or Mr. Kern—my three
science teachers at Nobles—when I
went into science,” says Ellen Mecray
’86, regional climate services director at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). At Nobles,
Mecray sang in Greensleeves, played
field hockey and lacrosse, skied, and
starred in Cabaret. When she headed to
Colgate, she was certain she would be
an international economist. “I thought I
had my future all mapped out,” she says.
She enjoyed French at Nobles, along with
an independent study in economics, and
figured she would live in Paris reporting
on the international economy. “I didn’t
15
even know what that meant!” laughs
Mecray. Funny how things change.
At Colgate, economics was a crowded
major, and Mecray couldn’t get into the
classes she wanted. Reading through the
course catalogue for anything interesting, she found an oceanography class.
Mecray loved the ocean—she lived
in Wellesley during high school but
spent every summer on North Haven
Island in Maine’s Penobscot Bay—and
she was intrigued by the idea of studying the ocean in the middle of upstate
New York. The class changed her life.
“My teacher was incredible…making science accessible for the thinking mind, instead of the memorizing
mind,” she says. “It was understanding the world in a very real sense.”
Mecray majored in geology, later
receiving a master’s in geological
oceanography from the University of
Rhode Island. After graduate school,
she taught at Williston Northampton School. Along with chemistry
and computer classes, Mecray taught
an oceanography elective, hoping to
draw teenagers to science. Mecray still
loves to mentor young scientists.
Every summer while teaching,
Mecray returned to Rhode Island to continue her research. She studied seasonal
layers of sediment in Rhode Island’s
Pettaquamscutt River: She drilled into
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN DOOHER
sediment, saw how sequences were
deposited, and determined the area’s history of contamination. “My mom always
told me, ‘I don’t want you studying the
wingspan of a gnat!’” Mecray says. Her
mother didn’t like the idea of her doing
something so esoteric she would forget
how to relate to the world. But Mecray’s
research was not that—the sediment
record documented the 1970s transition
from leaded to unleaded gasoline, and
chestnut trees disappearing during the
blight of 1917. Mecray re-created history
through mud.
While teaching was important to
Mecray, she loved research more. In
1997, she moved to Woods Hole to work
as an oceanographer with the United
States Geological Survey (USGS). She
stayed for a decade to continue her
sediment research in estuaries from the
Gulf of Maine to Long Island Sound. She
traveled often on research cruises: “I
am so happy when I am at sea,” Mecray
says. “You’re doing your work and you’re
sleep-deprived, but you’re having a ball.”
While working for the USGS, Mecray
joined a leadership program that allowed
her to work in different places, including
Alaska and Washington, D.C.
After D.C., Mecray left her beloved
Cape Cod and went to work at NOAA
headquarters. She wanted to understand
policy-making, strategic planning and
how research projects receive funds.
Mecray returned to Woods Hole after
three years, still working for NOAA
as one of six regional climate services
directors in the United States. “I’m much
more of a scientific communicator now,
working with states and private industry
to access NOAA’s climate information,”
says Mecray.
Stationed in Taunton with the
National Weather Service, Mecray works
alongside meteorologists whom she says
“have loved the weather since they were
about 9 years old.” Mecray had no idea at
9 years old she would end up where she is
today. What if she had gotten into one of
those economics classes?
—E.B. BARTELS ’06
V I C K Y S E E L E N , E N G L I S H FA C U LT Y
Ways of Seeing
When I say that it’s my 36th year of teaching, people nod in quiet astonishment.
“My 26th at Nobles.” Teaching English. It has always been important to me to call it
my career. Teaching is not something I do. It is part of who I am.
Snapshots: This morning, while discussing the latest New Yorker article in my
creative writing class (where we use it as our textbook), “Lost in Syria,” students
were asked first for general comments. “Let’s look at this from 30,000 feet,” I say.
Hands go up around our large seminar table in the Memorial Room. Yesterday,
Sunday, I sent them a one-minute video, filmed and narrated by me in my kitchen,
about my active reading. First I panned my kitchen, then my text, pointing out some
details I hoped they would note as they worked through their assignment.
How does one learn to actively read a nonfiction article in this magazine? I
wanted to give them a model, a neophyte’s effort at technology, gratefully received
but honestly critiqued by my students. I will try again, making another one about
another article.
Meanwhile, in my junior class sections, students had finished their 32 (minimum)
line recitations from Hamlet last Friday. One young woman, who knew she would
be absent that day, sent me a video of her performing her chosen lines, a Claudius
soliloquy, at the Calliope Coffee House last Friday night. The recording, clear and
steady of hand, made by a supportive friend, showed not only her dramatic rendering
but the audience’s spontaneous applause at her near-perfect performance.
I think about the fall, to a TED talk that I asked my students to listen to: Chimanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Dangers of a Single Story,” which became a theme for
our reading of her novel, Purple Hibiscus, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness. Students used this notion of a “single story” in a variety of ways,
cross-pollinating between texts, thinking about who “writes history” or “her story”.
How crucial it is to hear many voices.
I take my students to each show in the Foster Gallery, Nobles’ remarkably curated
gallery space. First, we spend 10 minutes looking at the work, reacting, talking quietly
among ourselves. Then I give them an assignment. It could be: Read the artists’
statements. It could be: Choose a work that has the most “energy” for you and use it
as a prompt for a very short scene or story. It could be: What are the themes in the
artists’ works? Expand. It is crucial for us
to move outside of our classroom into the
eclectic worlds presented to us in that precious space. We bring our journals. We take
in the voices, the quiet, the light, the color.
Teaching should be full of surprises. I
should like myself when I am in the room
with my students. I want to be growing, always, as I nudge my students deeper into a
text, encouraging their independence, their
confidence, their ability to listen and to contribute articulately and pointedly. And I want
them to know about the world in which all
of this literature finds greater meaning.
16
—VICKY SEELEN, ENGLISH FACULTY
the FABULOUS 40
JESSICA LEE ’01
K I M YA C H A R L E S A N D C O L E T T E F I N L E Y
Debunking
Stereotypes
We Have Volleyball
When Jessica Lee ’01 first started
working at the Representation Project,
one of her new coworkers joked that
she finally got to be a “professional
feminist.” But while the mission of the
Representation Project is to raise awareness around the damaging effects of
gender stereotypes, Lee notes that she
has always approached her career with
a “gender lens,” whether supporting
social entrepreneurs at Ashoka, finding
and cultivating talented social sector
professionals at New Sector Alliance, or
pursuing her MBA at Kellogg in Chicago.
“My interest in social justice was sparked
at Nobles,” she says, “and that definitely
included gender equality.” Today, Lee
works to distribute the Representation
Project’s films to hundreds of nonprofits
and leading corporations to advance
the discussion on gender stereotypes.
She is currently working on a project
about boys, men and the constructs of
masculinity, and will continue to look for
opportunities to continue the conversation around gender.
17
— GREG CROAK ’06
18
FIRST PROM KING
AND QUEEN NAMED
Jeanne Hilsinger ’76 and Ake Lindstrom ’76. While the
regal tradition did not endure, the crowns are timeless.
The seed was planted in spring 2011. Middle School Dean
Colette Finley and I knew that we were onto something, but we
could not have predicted the trajectory this idea would take.
We stumbled upon our common love of volleyball during the
New Orleans service trip. Recognizing that we both had played in
high school, we reminisced about the fun we had, the friends we
made and the impact the experience had on both of us. We felt that
there absolutely was a place for volleyball at Nobles and proposed
the idea to Director of Athletics Alex Gallagher ’90 in June. While
Alex focused on the in-house logistics and liaised with the other
Independent School League (ISL) athletic directors, our vision
came into focus. As we spoke to students and faculty, the buzz of
possibly starting a volleyball team spread throughout the campus.
But it was not until January 2013 that we got the news we’d been
anticipating. Volleyball would become an official ISL sport, and
Nobles would be able to field the first team in school history.
More than 50 girls showed up to our opening meeting and,
while there was enthusiasm in spades, we quickly learned that the
girls didn’t have much experience with the sport, though some of
them are star athletes in basketball, softball and ice hockey. So
some committed portions of their summer break to attend local
volleyball camps to develop their basic skills. As first-time varsity
coaches, we also attended a coaching clinic led by some of the
best minds in the college-level game.
Before we knew it, preseason practices were upon us. Twentyeight eager faces stood before us in Rappaport Gym. The next three
weeks were spent selecting our team, building the program culture,
and teaching our team the basics of the game. We had no illusions
about it: The ensuing two months would be frustrating, invigorating, exhausting and inspiring. But we couldn’t help but imagine the
possibilities that lay ahead of us.
The nerves and excitement during our first matches were
palpable, and the support the home crowds offered energized
the group. Amid the losses that came, the girls rallied around
one another to offer encouragement and to recognize the improvements made each day. Those hard times brought the
girls closer and imbued our team with resilience and pride.
The 2013 season ended on a string of avenged losses, a sixmatch winning streak that brought our overall record to 8–8. The
record, however, was hardly as important as what we as a team had
accomplished.
As the 2014 season approached, we considered how we would
manage the increasing expectations—real or perceived—on us.
In September, we came storming out of the gate with five straight
wins, and with each match, we committed to our continued learning, development and improvement. Our motto was “Point by point.
19
Match by match.” We couldn’t help it, though; visions of postseason play danced in our heads.
The last week of the season was finally upon us, and we
found ourselves locked in two close battles: first, with Milton and
St. Paul’s atop the ISL, and second, with Governor’s in our New
England Prep School class. While a share of the ISL title was not
in the cards for us, we took great pride in not only making it to the
postseason but also entering the pool as the No. 1 seed. With a
15–4 record, our feeling going forward was that the matches we
played were a bonus; we’d proven ourselves as viable contenders in
the ISL and NEPSAC.
The tournament started off with a rematch with an ISL foe,
and we earned the win by playing some of our best volleyball up
to that point. We then won our next game, which was enough to
stamp our ticket to the finals. On that gray Sunday afternoon in
Wilbraham, Mass., in truly dramatic fashion, we traded hardfought sets with our opponent to force a deciding fifth set. Momentum was on our side from the middle of the fourth set straight
through to the last point. As the opponent’s attack sailed beyond
our endline and out of bounds, our fate for the 2014 season was
sealed. We were the New England Prep School Athletic Council
Class B Volleyball Champions.
Who knows what next season will bring? We are still a work in
progress. For the time being, however, we are riding the incredible
high that the past two years have brought us and using that energy
to usher in the 2015 season and its possibilities.
—KIMYA CHARLES,
COLLEGE COUNSELOR, VARSITY VOLLEYBALL COACH
the FABULOUS 40
20 On the Radio
LULU MILLER ’01
What would happen if you could “turn
off” fear? How do categories define
us, and why do we crave them?
These are among the dazzling questions Lulu Miller ’01 explores in her new
NPR series, Invisibilia. The NPR Science
desk reporter and former Radiolab producer, with co-host Alix Spiegel, seeks to
uncover “the intangible forces that shape
human behavior—like ideas, beliefs,
assumptions and emotions.” Blending scientific research with personal
narratives, they challenge listeners to
re-examine their own lives.
Miller and Spiegel, admirers of each
other’s work for NPR, realized that the
unifying thread connecting the stories that captivated them was literally
something they couldn’t put their finger
on. The abstract, psychological factors
influencing human experience and interaction are the basis for Invisibilia.
New Yorker correspondent Sarah
Larson writes about the rise of the
VA N E S S A C E S A R ’ 0 3
Standing Up to Challenge
podcast and how audio journalism
adds depth and artistry to storytelling.
“Emotion, that wonderful and nefarious invisible force, is a powerful part
of entertaining journalism of the NPR
variety. And it’s tied to our love of both
storytelling and neuroscience. We want
answers and advice; we want things to
make sense. On Invisibilia, they often do.”
—KIM NEAL
Follow Miller on Twitter @lmillernpr
CP [Chris Pasterczyk] always told fabulous stories in her physics class.
The problems we had to solve—about friction, wave-particle divides,
gravity— I always had a great drawing or premise. She instilled in
me a love of science fiction that is actually nonfiction. That was the
beginning of the realization that magic can happen on earth. I tried, for
a moment, to follow in CP’s footsteps. I took one physics class in college
and quietly failed my way into a different profession where I still got to
think about this stuff. Mr. Carey. His insane compassion for all us cranky
and confused souls. Felt like there was a father watching out for us. And
also his extremely good teaching: dissection of plot, his comments on
our stories. Mr. Dorsey. The Swayzes. David Roane. GOD BLESS
THE ART TEACHERS! GOD BLESS THE ART WING! It felt like
this hallowed space where we could MAKE. We could turn
off the analytical sides and will clay into pots. David Roane,
the best drawing teacher in the world, taught me about
blind drawing (drawing without ever looking at the paper)
and how the shapes and lines were more pure if you just
let them be, without constantly checking in. And last, but not
least, SHEERAN. He brought French to life, but perhaps most important
to me was his coaching. Ushering all us little overworked stressed
perfectionists into the woods for some air, some running. It was the
beautiful counterpoint to all the academics.”
—LULU MILLER ’01
Vanessa Cesar ’03 is a tax consultant at
Deloitte in Atlanta—a great job, but not
unusual except for Cesar’s tenacity in
earning the position. Getting to Nobles
was a challenge, too, as was completing
her bachelor’s degree in the midst of
family challenges.
Cesar was attending a parochial
middle school in Boston when a family friend told her about Dana Hall in
Wellesley, Mass. Cesar was determined
to go, knowing she wanted more of a
challenge, but she was undermined when
a nun at her school refused to complete
recommendations, asserting that Cesar’s
family couldn’t afford the tuition. “She
said I was a good student—but I would
never make it.” So Cesar instead went to
Trinity Catholic High School.
“My basketball coach, John
Depasquale, coached my older sister
and was a family friend,” Cesar said.
Depasquale told me that [Nobles faculty
member and former basketball coach]
Michael Herring had been asking
about good players who were also
good students.
“Once I looked into Nobles, I knew
this was the place for me,” Cesar said.
“It was what I had always wanted in an
education.
“At Nobles, I learned to keep an open
mind and the importance of building
relationships. Meeting Betsy VanOot,
and having the opportunity to learn from
her, truly changed things for me. She
helped me to not just see things for what
they are but what they could maybe be
also. I had found something that made
me feel like I had a place at the school.
My art began to speak for me in ways I
could never imagine.” Cesar said that
other art teachers also supported her
development—and that faculty members
Sheila McElwee, Kate Coon, and Ben and
Sarah Snyder changed her life.
21
After Nobles, Cesar set out to pursue
the art she’d learned to love, starting
classes at the Museum of Fine ArtsBoston, interning at Sotheby’s and even
doing a stint with CityYear. Soon, much
of the family moved to Georgia and Cesar
transferred to Savannah College of Art
and Design (SCAD). Soon after the move,
Cesar’s mother became seriously ill, and
Cesar was overwhelmed by full-time
caregiving and academic demands. She
took a break.
While caring for her mother, Cesar
worked for the Internal Revenue Service
and found that she liked it. When, several
years later, her family commitments had
eased, she wanted to return to school
but needed advice. She reconnected
with former longtime college counselor
Kate Coon, who helped her navigate
the process and pick up studies at the
Robinson College of Business at Georgia
State. There, Cesar won recognition as an
outstanding scholar.
Cesar credits Coon with helping her
return to school successfully. “It’s funny
because nothing in my life has really been
linear. I went to two elementary schools,
two high schools, three colleges with
CityYear and time off in between all that.
So I’ve bounced around a bit, but each
experience played a valuable part in the
person I am today.
“Something good always comes out of
something that challenges you.” She said
that Ben Snyder told her about CityYear
when she learned that she was accepted
to Rhode Island School of Design—but
that she didn’t get the necessary financial
aid. “Because of my family situation, I
have never really been able to call on my
parents for help—I never wanted to add
to their stress. I have always been independent, but during times of true need,
Ben and Sarah Snyder were the ones I
was always able to reach out to for guidance, advice or other support. Without
them—and my boyfriend and my family
always having confidence in me—I would
not be where I am today.”
Cesar said that her myriad experriences helped her better understand her
strengths and weaknesses. Now, she says,
she just wants to find mental, physical
and emotional happiness. “I’ve dealt with
so much adversity throughout my life
that I look forward to reaching that goal.
They say it takes an immense amount of
pressure to create a diamond, and that’s
how I view the struggles I have faced
and continue to face. Ever since I was a
child, nothing came easy for my family.
We struggled financially and I’ve always
worked hard to get what I needed. The
twists and turns I faced have shaped me.
Even when things seemed impossible, at
the end of the journey, I always learned
something from it.”
She credits her faith in God for making
so much possible. She also hopes, she said,
to reach a level of success that allows her
to provide support to young minorities
who just need a helping hand to make it.
“I’ve learned the importance of having a support system, and I look forward
to being that for others.”
—HEATHER SULLIVAN
the FABULOUS 40
HELENA JENSEN ’17
Talks Feminism
Students for Gender Awareness (SGA) was officially incorporated
into the Nobles community on October 23, 2014. Prior to giving
a nerve-racking inaugural presentation in assembly, I worked for
months to figure out the best way to address the need for more
conversations around gender, feminism, sexism and gender-based
stereotypes. I met with teachers, administrators and older students
to strengthen my ideas. We put care and time into developing the
framework for the group because we want it to become a fundamental force within this community. We want to be creative, unique and
progressive enough to make everyone interested in talking about
gender dynamics. We want it to be safe to express yourself but also
provocative. I don’t necessarily want everyone nodding their heads in
agreement when we discuss issues. I hope that some people will be
shaking their heads and asking hard questions.
The mission of the new group: “Students for Gender Equity
Awareness (SGEA) strives to promote awareness about gender
stereotypes and create a gender-positive culture within the greater
Nobles community.” Two of the most loaded words in the American
language are “feminist” and “feminism,” and I’m interested in helping
reclaim those words. Talking about gender inequality is still relatively
taboo in American culture. One of the most important long-term
goals I have for this organization is to cultivate an environment where
caring about the ways gender impacts our lives is not only accepted,
but encouraged. Sexism in contemporary culture is not always
overt—but its effects are still real.
Coincidentally, in the past 12 months, feminist movements in pop
culture and advertisements have garnered attention— the No More
campaign and the Throw Like a Girl campaign. Many say we are in
the fourth wave of feminism. Nobles has been coeducational for only
40 years. When I came to Nobles, I expected there to be a group like
this. We have come a long way, but there is still room for conversation
and improvement. This subject is always going to be something I care
deeply about. I don’t think that
I will major in gender studies,
but if I’m in business, I’ll find
ways to emphasize that these
issues are important. If I’m a
writer, my writing will include
related content.
My hope is that in my next
two years at Nobles, SGA
can set the stage for 40 more
years of students who strive
to be advocates for change,
equality and respect.
22
NEGAR ALIABADI ’96
23
On the Front Lines
What is courage? More often than not
we find it portrayed in images of men
packing up and leaving home to dodge
bullets and bombs on battlefields.
But what other word would you use
to describe what it takes for men and
women to pack up and leave the safety
of home to fight a deadly disease?
Negar Aliabadi, works today as part
of a volunteer force in West Africa
fighting the spread of the Ebola virus,
a disease that has taken more than
9,500 lives since its outbreak in 2013.
Her decision to volunteer in the fight
has roots in her time at Nobles.
“When I think back, I remember
the impact of the community service
we did and the emphasis it gave in
looking at the world outside beyond
Nobles, thinking beyond the small
community” she says. For Aliabadi,
community service meant teaching
English to refugees from Uganda and
the genocide in Rwanda. Teaching
meant listening, too, and learning the
life stories of the people she met. “I
remember so well asking one of them
about his family, and his telling me
they had all been killed.”
Her route to medicine was not
direct, though. An art history major
in college, she worked first for three
years in France with a team excavating 13th-century artifacts. Though she
loved the work, she felt she needed
more, a field in which “problem solving meant finding solutions for people
with not a lot of choices.”
That realization brought her back
to Boston, to Tufts Medical School,
a Schweitzer Fellowship, work at the
Boston Medical Center, and again volunteer work, this time at Rosie’s Place,
a women’s shelter, and in Nicaragua.
Later she would move on to
New York, to Columbia’s Mellman
School of Public Health, and work
at Bellevue Hospital, the nation’s
oldest public hospital, whose commitment to serving illegal immigrants, refugees and the indigent
fit well with Aliabadi’s priorities
and her growing interest in fighting
the spread of infectious diseases.
Aliabadi would eventually find herself in Washington, D.C., working for
the Centers for Disease Control. When
the call went out for volunteers to go
to West Africa to assist in what had
become a major public health crisis,
she volunteered.
Today in Guinea-Conarky, Aliabadi’s working day begins at 7 a.m.
and ends 14 to 18 hours later. Her
typical day involves meetings, training
sessions, clinics, strategy meetings and
visits to the field, along with sessions
with nurses.
Friends and family, at first wary,
have come to know that the staff work
with every possible protection. Visions
of life in other countries are often
skewed, she thinks. Her own experience, as a child of 8 leaving Iran in the
’80s, stays with her. She returns there
every few years, visiting extended
family and sharing stories. “It’s not the
place the media seem to present it to
be to me. It’s all very normal. It’s where
I spend time with my family.”
—KEVIN BOWEN
—HELENA JENSEN ’17
PHOTO BY ADAM KOMICH
the FABULOUS 40
25 The Taste of Opportunity
G I TA K A N T R O W ’ 0 7
Puckett (sixth from
left) with her group
of Caritas high school
volunteers in Ruse
HANNAH PUCKETT
A National Narrative
Hannah Puckett visibly lights up at
the mention of the Ottoman Empire.
Puckett, who teaches History of the
Human Community (HHC) and AP
European History at Nobles, can’t wait to
talk about her favorite period of Turkish
history. “There are so many connections
to contemporary topics. The HHC curriculum emphasizes that to understand
current conflicts, we need to draw out
the stories, starting from the seeds of
those conflicts to today.”
Puckett’s own story includes more
travel and learning in the past several
years than some have experienced in a
lifetime. A high-school teacher passionate about Balkan history first sparked her
interest in the region. After attending
Trinity University in Texas, she taught
for a year in Shanghai, but couldn’t resist
the pull of the Balkans. A Fulbright
teach-ing position in Bulgaria deepened
her fascination with its history. “I’m
24
especially interested in the stories about
Bulgarian history under the Ottoman
Empire and the efforts they make to create their own identity,” she says. “There
is a tendency to emphasize their Christianity and Europeanness, and de-emphasize their time under Ottoman rule.”
Puckett’s work in Bulgaria carried
beyond the classroom. She worked
for Caritas-Ruse, a Catholic organization dedicated to improving the lives
of Northern Bulgarians through
community-building projects, such as
educational programs for Turkish and
Roma children and public awareness
campaigns about the region’s human
trafficking. In 2014, she returned to
help start a nongovernmental organization called Centre Nadja, which
supports women and children who
suffer from domestic violence and
other abuse. She and a Bulgarian
friend organized a summer camp for
children, many of whose mothers
are victims of human trafficking.
In September 2014, Puckett completed her master’s from the New York
University Center for European and
Mediterranean Studies. In January,
the esteemed European University Institute (EUI) selected her thesis, “Narrating
the Nation: Nationalist Discourse on the
Muslim Presence in Bulgaria,” for the
Marc Bloch Prize. Her thesis explores
the ways in which national narratives
about Bulgaria’s history under Ottoman rule influenced relations between
Bulgarians and their Muslim minorities
during socialism. Puckett shares the
honor with Edgar Pereira of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Hers was one of
79 applications in 12 different languages,
representing 24 different nationalities.
This April, she’ll accept the award and
present a talk to EUI faculty in Florence.
Reflecting on a speckled career journey that included a design firm and
an online learning startup, Gita
Kantrow ’07 felt unfulfilled and was
planning her next move. Her boyfriend posed, “You love cooking. Why
don’t you do that?” That was the
launchpad for her culinary career.
Kantrow, who left rural Nepal for
New England to live with her adoptive
family in Lincoln, Mass., when she was
only 9, says, “I came back to cooking, the
thing that helped me learn language and
immerse myself in the culture of my new
home country when I arrived. It’s always
been something I love and have found
comforting. I just never thought it could
be my career.”
After exhaustive research and
navigating lots of red tape, she launched
Kantrow Catering in 2013. Although she
has successfully carried off large events at
Harvard Law and Mass Art, her favorite
assignments are more intimate meals
that allow her space to play. She remembers a client who asked her to prepare a
Russian meal. “I had never cooked Russian food before, but did my research and
taught myself how,” she says. “Then I put
my own spin on it. You have to own it.”
Back in 2007, the year Kantrow graduated, she appeared in the Nobles Bulletin
as a featured senior profile. Even then,
she was helping rural Nepalese women
by selling holistic beauty products they
made and sending them the profits. During a visit to Nepal after graduation, she
was frustrated by the lack of educational
opportunities for girls. She wanted to
help keep girls in school, where they
would have a better chance to become
financially independent, rather than
resort to premature marriage.
Kantrow has established a scholarship
to help Nepalese girls gain those footholds. She is also involved with a young
nongovernmental organization called
Smile Nepal, which seeks to improve the
welfare of street children in Kathmandu.
“Girls in Nepal don’t even know what’s
available to them outside of their experience, so they can’t even dream about it,”
she says. “Once you taste freedom and
opportunity, you want and expect a lot
more. That’s what I want for them. That’s
what I had.”
—KIM NEAL
26
Nobles was, hands down, the four best years of
my education. That counts college, that counts
law school. I came from public school, and Nobles
was so vastly different. People put in the time and
effort outside the classroom. It just made a total
difference to me in learning how to think for
myself, how to write, and how to express myself. For me, Nobles
was just an incredible formative time in my life with people who
made a huge difference. It set me up for the rest of my life.
—KIM NEAL
—KURT SOMERVILLE ’75
PHOTO COURTESY OF HANNAH PUCKETT
the FABULOUS 40
DEB HARRISON
Recollections from
the Gleason Years
For those of you who don’t know me, I teach a few biology
courses in the science department and coach squash, and
I am here to share a few recollections from the Gleason
years. So let’s turn back the calendar just a tiny bit:
THE DATE:
Late March 1981
THE VENUE: ESG’s office
THE EVENT: A job interview for a position in the Nobles science
department
A young teacher from Pomfret School, whose
colleague, Charlie Putnam, had encouraged her to think about an
opening at Nobles. The candidate was me.
THE CANDIDATE:
The interview conversation that day unfolded as it probably had for
others before me. A little bit of airtime was given to the nuts and
bolts of teaching biology, advising kids, dorm duty, and coaching
squash and lacrosse. The rest of our chat, however, meandered
through other topics, mostly about connections to people, mostly
involving stories.
We enjoyed comparing notes about traveling: My trip to
Scotland for a few weeks with Pomfret students had ended just
several days before I set foot in Ted’s office and was the catalyst
for Ted to share the story of his memorable trip years before,
driving through Scotland with his sister, Persis.
Further into our chat, Ted lit right up upon mention of my
upcoming summer job at Exeter, and that triggered more conversation and more stories. I learned that there were quite a few
Nobles-Pomfret connections and secretly hoped I’d end up being
one of them.
By some stroke of luck a few weeks later, a good old-fashioned
letter arrived via snail mail. Within it was my first Nobles contract.
My Nobles journey officially began about five months later during
an annual ritual known as a faculty retreat, and the rest, as they say,
is history.
Neophyte that I was, the concept of a faculty retreat was foreign
to me, but what was readily apparent on day one was the value
placed on collegial time together, that my new boss placed a high
priority on the notion of community and family, and that this was
a warm, welcoming place. Oh, yes, and I realized that I’d need to
learn the words to a song called “God Is Love.”
Memorable from those six years in which my tenure overlapped
with Ted’s headship were many other moments that reinforced that
community and family ethic. The Gleasons’ house in its new loca-
27
tion now sits next to my house on campus. As I walk by their house
each day during my commute to and from school, I fondly recall
the warm welcome extended by Anne Gleason when she and Ted
hosted numerous faculty events in that very same white house.
On occasion, Ted would drop in and visit a class that was underway—he loved being in the classroom, loved teaching, and placed
high value on the relationships that developed between students
and teachers.
We were referred to by our initials back then—ESG was especially interested in middle initials as well as middle names. I suspect
that a number of present and past faculty members in this room
can still rattle off the initials of many of their colleagues from those
days. I know I can.
Whenever the wisdom of ESG was shared, its focus on caring
for others resonated and stuck with me. Ted communicated loudly
and clearly the importance of passionate commitment to the
school’s mission, passion for one’s subject matter, for the magic
and growth that happen in a classroom or through athletics or
service or the arts, passion for being with and understanding kids,
and for making a genuine commitment to the community that Ted
referred to as a family.
As I settled in and came to know the story of my new school, I
learned more about Ted’s role in its coeducation. That mattered a
PHOTO BY KIM NEAL
lot to me. You see, as Ted and Nobles welcomed girls into the upper
school in the fall of 1974, my own senior year of high school was
also beginning, elsewhere. As a graduate of a previously all-male
college that had pretty recently taken the plunge into coeducation,
also not long after Title IX was passed, and as Pomfret’s very first
female science teacher, this stuff was important to me.
In September of my second year here, coeducation became a
reality for the Nobles middle school, another important step for
Nobles led by Ted. A memorable point on this school’s timeline, it
was the moment when a dynamic, bright, talented new member of
Class V named Beth Reilly first found her seat in a morning assembly in this space and began her Nobles career. Who knew then that
today she’d be Bob Henderson’s boss?
There are 11 current faculty members whom Ted hired, who are
still teaching, coaching, and working with kids in numerous other
capacities at Nobles. According to my humble calculations, that’s
over 360 collective years of service to the school—over 360 years
of weaving and strengthening those threads of what Ted stood for
and hoped for, in the vital fabric of this community, honoring his
timeless legacy.
THESE REMARKS ARE EXCERPTED FROM DEB HARRISON’S SPEECH HONORING THE
LIFE OF FORMER HEADMASTER TED GLEASON AT A SEPTEMBER 13, 2014, EVENT IN
LAWRENCE AUDITORIUM.
L I S A C O LT
Imagination and
Compassion
Lisa Colt was wooed from Dedham Country Day
School to Nobles in 1973 in anticipation of the arrival
of young women a year later. An art teacher by training and a student counselor by proclivity, in many
ways she was the successor to Laura Putnam (see
profile, p32).
Colt was hired by Head of School Ted Gleason to
teach conventional art (painting and drawing), but
she expanded her portfolio to satisfy the musings and
meanderings of her creative mind.
Her imagination obviously knew no bounds. One
of her most popular courses was called “Art Without Boundaries.” One assignment asked students to
“make a futile object that would both tempt and frustrate the user.” A student in the Class of 1981 stuffed
Crayola crayons into a cigarette box.
For an oversubscribed workshop during February Week on “Death and Dying,” students read books
such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and wrote on
the subject. The culminating event was a sleepover in
the graveyard behind St. Paul’s Church in Dedham,
replete with additional appropriate readings and
lanterns for warmth and lighting.
Two of her biggest proponents to this day were
members of the Class of 1976: Head of School Bob
Henderson and Ralph Wales, head of the Gordon
School in Providence, R.I., which he described as
“The Lisa Colt Vision School, a place where children
will grow and thrive.”
—JOYCE ELDRIDGE
28
the FABULOUS 40
M I C H E L E D U FA U LT ’ 0 7 ( 1 9 8 8 – 2 0 1 1 )
Her Stories
The stories are many. I could tell you
that in second grade her word of the
day was bioluminescence, and it was. I
could tell you that in fourth grade, she
could not write fiction because everything she read about the natural world,
for example, she just remembered. She
claimed she had no imagination, but
she was wrong. I could tell you that
in 10th grade she wrote a paper in an
advanced French Literature course
on a poem by Charles Baudelaire, read
by a visiting teacher from France who
was a grader for the French baccalaureat. When she kept insisting it was
so perfect it had to be plagiarism, I
told the teacher that it was an in-class
write, and it was. I could tell you she
volunteered at New England Village, a
center for developmentally challenged
adults, putting in Herculean hours, and
they are logged. I could tell you she
played tenor saxophone and was cocaptain of two varsity teams, and she
led by example. Finally, I could tell you
that for her senior project, she built
a telescope to go beyond and see the
stars. All true. She is Michele Dufault.
Paraphrasing a comment made by a
colleague, she upended all norms, she
was universally lauded,
her quantitative skills
were equaled by her
verbal ones, and her science was on par with her
humanism. However,
with all this excellence,
it was her modesty that stood out. In
a time when people are always seeking applause and affirmation, Michele
just went about doing all she loved
in a self-effacing manner, wishing
there were 25 hours in a day. And, yes,
there are many more stories to tell.
29
—MARK SHEERAN,
MODERN LANGUAGES
K E L S E Y L AW L E R ’ 0 9
30
BROOKE ASNIS ’90
Choosing Challenge
Brooke Asnis ’90 chalks up her high school success at Nobles to the support
of adults who demanded her best.
“Advisors, coaches and teachers are all looking for ways to make kids more
visible within the school community, and encouraging them to expand their
interests.” She remembers in Bill Bussey’s biography class her junior year,
when he told her she was every bit the writer as a classmate she admired
academically. It forever changed her perception of her own abilities.
Asnis received a bachelor’s in modern European history and a master’s
in education from Harvard, and worked in their admission office. She also
taught at the Chapin School prior to working in graduate affairs at Nobles.
“Coming back to work here, I was excited about the opportunities for growth.
Nobles challenged me as a kid, but even more as an adult.”
In fall 2014, Asnis joined the admission team, where she thrives on interaction with students, tour guides and families. Her message: “You are never
changing so much as you are during the 4-6 years you’re at Nobles; this place
nurtures you during that pivotal time.” She marvels at the “poise and confidence” students gain from freshman to senior year.
Years of working with graduates also gives Asnis appreciation for some
of the longer term benefits of coeducation. “We’ve benefited so much from
having an active community of female volunteers who are connected to
each other, within a larger group of graduates. Through my work with fellow
women graduates, I have met close friends and been inspired by incredible
women doing amazing things with their lives. ” She herself is co-chairing
Nobles’ sesquicentennial celebration in 2016, advising students, teaching
Personal Development, and being a mom and coach to her own kids.
So what compels Asnis to continue to give so much of her heart and time
to Nobles? While she was always loyal to the school, when she was diagnosed
with breast cancer in 2011, she says, “Nobles carried me. Even going through
treatment, I continued to feel supported and challenged. Besides my family,
there is no other community with whom I’m closer. ”
I Play Basketball
I had to leave early from the theater that day in the fall of my Class
IV year, when my fellow technicians asked why. I was still getting
used to older kids asking me things, as I’d come from an all-girls
middle school, where I was tall and awkward and redheaded and
wasn’t asked many questions, or even spoken to by my peers, very
regularly. I told them the truth: that I had basketball tryouts. “Varsity basketball?” they asked me incredulously. I shrugged my shoulders and confirmed, puzzled at their disbelief. It was just tryouts, I
thought, as I emptied my pockets of 2 ½” drywall screws. I had met
the coach the year before, when I visited the school to watch the
girls basketball team take on an ISL opponent that promptly folded
like an origami chair taking on too much weight under the might
of Nobles’ starting five (the final score something like Nobles, 74,
Other Team, 22), and had seen some of the returning players scattered over campus during the fall. My height, combined with my
shock of red hair, created an effect like that of a beacon, so there
was no chance of going unnoticed as I roamed the hallways between classes or on my way to the theater. By November, I heard it
was known that I would be trying out for the team, though that fall
I had barely interacted with any athletes. Rather than on the fields,
my autumn afternoons were spent in the cool dark of the theater,
digging through the bowels under the stage, looking for pieces
of pipe or watching the seniors joke and dance around the stage
as they built knee walls and wooden frames and deck pieces, or
clutching the edge of the genie lift at 20 feet in the air as someone
more adept at being up high adjusted a light fixture. I was certain
I had found my tribe, and from the sounds of the boorish jeers my
friends slung my way as I prepared to walk to the gym (the GYM,
they mused, what it must be like at the GYM, where the OTHERS
go to SPORTS), I couldn’t truly be a member of both.
My well-worn sneakers smelled like a snake had shed its skin
inside of them and then went ahead and decided that that would
be a good time and place to die, so I hoped that I would have time
to lace up in the locker room—perhaps the farthest stall away from
the sinks—before stepping out onto the court. My skin carried the
mordant smell of dust and rust and the grease that comes on new
saw blades, and as I stepped up to the baseline at the sound of
the whistle, we didn’t begin to run, as I thought we would. Instead,
Alex Gallagher ‘90, coach and athletic director, commanding an
impenetrable silence, began to speak about how above all else, this
team was a family. Regardless of wins or losses, every time you dive
for a ball, every time you go up for a lay-up, every time you fight
and claw and push yourself, you aren’t doing it for the win, you’re
doing it for your team. You play your best because your teammates
deserve the best from you, and they are out on the court giving you
the same dedication and love that you’re giving them. Family is the
31
most important thing, he said. More important than winning. More
important than banners. We don’t win unless each person on this
team believes that, he said. Now, up and back four times. Go.
Alex Gallagher is the best coach that I have ever had. It isn’t
because he has coached 12 straight ISL championship teams, or
because the ISL team record in those 11 years is 130 wins, two
losses. It isn’t because the girls have won the last four consecutive
New England Class A Championships. He is the best coach I have
ever had the honor to play for because he is the most articulate,
empathetic, passionate, fearless, devoted person that I have ever
met. When my grandfather passed away in 2007, he attended both
the wake and the funeral. When I scored 1,000 points, he stepped
out on the court, hugged me, said he loved me, and then to get back
out there because we needed to finish the game. When I decided to
forgo my decision to play basketball in college, he helped me call all
the coaches I sent DVDs to tell them my decision. I still think about
the exhilarating thrill I felt each time he gave a pregame speech. He
came to every show I worked on in the fall and spring, and when,
in the spring of my final year, I did my senior project—a 45-minute, one-woman show called “Bag Lady”—he brought the entire
baseball team, in uniform, and made them sit in the front rows.
Before every big game, he sent me emails with subject lines like “As
the Curtain Goes Up,” encouraging me to have confidence in myself
because he believed in me, as did the entire team. He helped me
realize that I didn’t have to choose between two separate tribes of
people, between two vastly different things that I loved to do, and
that the only thing that mattered was that I was passionate and
dedicated and happy. The girls basketball program at Nobles has
experienced staggering success under Alex Gallagher because he is
a person who coaches a family, not a team.
—KELSEY LAWLER ’09
the FABULOUS 40
E M I R A G J ATA ’ 0 0
Tiny—but Inside, a Giant
Think “Tirana, Albania, 1993.” Think
elfin 11-year-olds. Connect those
two images to Nobles. Doesn’t quite
compute? I thought not. But those
references are the source of one of
the most unusual student careers in
Nobles history, a career that began
when Ken Bader, a journalist for NPR,
visited Albania on assignment to mentor
journalists there just as that country
was emerging from communism. The
primary problems for Bader and the
American contingent were housing and
translation. Housing was offered by the
Gjata family, who happened to have an
11-year-old daughter, Emira, who spoke
some English. Primary problems solved.
When the stint in Albania was
completed, Bader wanted to reward
his young translator with a trip to
America and Disney World. That
trip morphed into Bader’s becoming
Gjata’s American guardian (a way out
of Albania for her) and, in turn, his
role as guardian led him to Nobles to
explore American private schools. It
was one of those serendipitous moments
when all the links in the chain clicked
together: petite 11-year-old, slight
accent, hesitant vocabulary. Of course,
Nobles would accept her. Nobles was
charmed, Gjata was flattered, and six
highly successful years began that fall.
Perhaps the secret to that success was
embodied in a remark by one of Gjata’s
Albanian friends: “She was so little, and
she cared so much.” Gjata was “little”
(One journalist observed, “She was tiny,
but inside was a giant”), but the important idea was that she cared so much. She
cared about excellence; she never wanted
any of her work to be less than superlative. She had an outsider’s perspective
and she wanted “inside.” And what
Gjata wanted usually became reality.
Gjata threw herself into Nobles
and America in general. The academic
work came easily. She spoke Albanian,
French, Italian and English (and has
since added Spanish). She played a
variety of sports (lacrosse, hockey, field
hockey, crew) as if the athletic program were the proverbial candy store,
established primarily for her to sample
possibilities. She tried drama, was in a
musical, organized charitable events.
She boarded and also lived with the family of a Nobles faculty member, Linda
[FROM A JUNE 18, 2007, STORY IN THE BOSTON GLOBE]
Sometimes I think back to how it
started. What if [Bader] hadn’t
lived in our apartment? If I
hadn’t learned English? If
Nobles didn’t accept me?
Sometimes it feels to me
like it was destined.”
—EMIRA GJATA
Woodard. But her real secret was an
ability to get along easily with her peers,
and never to create antagonisms, never
to appear focused on outdoing those
peers (although she almost always did).
As if the barebones of this Cinderella story were not enough, four years
later her parents won, against all odds,
a lottery to obtain green cards, and they
immigrated to Boston, bringing the
family together and completing a kind
of contemporary version of what the 19th
century called the “American dream.”
She matriculated at Harvard—“the
only American college her friends in
Albania had ever heard of.” She then
took a “gap year” interning back home
in Albania; majored in economics in
college because she loved “the policy
implications”; entered investment banking; took a year off to travel the world;
returned to finance and consulting; and,
most recently, married last December.
At some point, Gjata summarized her
worldview: “Chance, luck. . . . suddenly
opportunity knocks; my parents taught
me you have to be ready.” Gjata was
ready and Nobles was the beneficiary.
32
—DICK BAKER
33 A Time of Transition
J O H N H O W E ’ 74 , P E T E R H O W E ’ 8 2 A N D S A M H O W E V E R H O V E K ’ 7 8
Though the Howe brothers (John ’74, Sam ’78, Peter
’82) never overlapped at Nobles, they spanned a period
they call “a time of transition not only for Nobles, but
for the whole country.” Now they’ve come together to
honor their late parents through an unrestricted endowment fund to support teaching excellence and provide
scholarship aid. A snapshot of their time at Nobles, from
1970–1982, in their own words:
I loved about Nobles was that you were encouraged to be on a team
for three seasons and be in the musical. During the remembrance
of Ted Gleason last fall, I realized that he thought out the extracurriculars very carefully. Making The Nobleman a strong, independent
quality publication was very important to him. One of our reasons for
establishing the fund is that Nobles was so formative for each of us—
not only for our educations, but also our vocations. (Editor’s note: John
works in alternative energy; Sam and Peter are both journalists.)
John: My class was the last all-male class. I entered a school of 220
boys—probably not terribly different than the school one might
have encountered in 1945. During my sophomore year, Ted Gleason
arrived, and the trustees decided that the school needed to be
competitive in the changing landscape of secondary schools. Our
family lived through the era of schools transitioning from single-sex
to coed. [My older brother] Harry was in the final all-male class at
Phillips Exeter Academy. Our sister Sylvia graduated from Concord
Academy in the last all-girls class. I graduated with the last all-male
class at Nobles and entered Amherst College the last year it was
all male. My class coincided with the Nixon era, so it was also an
extraordinarily transitional time for the whole country.
Peter: I came through Nobles when it had the strengths of a boys’
school with girls in it. Our parents attached incredible value to
education. My dad went to Exeter, Harvard and Harvard Law. Mom
graduated from Smith in 1946 and worked for The Boston Herald
Traveler before she started having kids. I didn’t appreciate this at
the time, but she was just the classic example of a brilliant woman
who, if she’d been born 40 years later, would have had an incredible
professional career in journalism. She had such brilliance, grace,
strength and talents that she channeled into bringing up five kids.
We’ve always talked about the great family dinner table conversations that we had with our parents. It was their love of Nobles and
support of Nobles that was really of a piece with the values they
held, for all of us to be as well educated as we could be. Of all the
gifts our parents gave us, our Nobles education is at the very top
of the list. When I’ve come to speak to students, I ask them to
appreciate the fact that Nobles is a small place where one can accomplish very big things.
Sam: John entered a school with clear 19th-century roots. By the
time Peter graduated, it was a school that was zooming on all
cylinders for the 21st century. It’s remarkable when you think of the
process of becoming coeducational—the evolution of the physical
plant, what was taught here, the extracurriculars. One of the things
—KIM NEAL
34
John Gifford ’86, Beth Reilly ’87 and
Hutch Hutchinson ’77. Hutchinson taught
science while Gifford and Reilly
were teaching fellows.
B E T H R E I L LY ’ 8 7
Reflections on Nobles
I vividly remember when I applied to
Nobles. I was very happy in the Needham
public schools, and for a variety of
rea-sons, including Proposition 2 ½’s
passage, my parents wanted me to
look at independent schools. I was
very reluctant to go.
I sat in the interview with Ned Bigelow, who was then the co-director of
admission, and he asked why I wanted
to come to Nobles. I said I didn’t want
to come to Nobles. Ned asked me why,
and I explained to him that I was really
happy with my friends, I loved where I
was, and I had dreamed of growing up
and playing for the Needham Rockets.
My parents were making me do this.
Ned pivoted and engaged me in
a really nice conversation that took
the pressure off of me. It was shocking—especially shocking later, when
I worked on admission committees
at Nobles and came to appreciate the
competitiveness of the process that I
actually got in, despite that interview.
I probably was aided by the fact
that I was applying for eighth grade
in the first year of coeducation in the
middle school. Maybe I got lucky that
Nobles could be a little less choosy at
the time. But I got in a big battle with
my parents, who said I had to try it for a
year. If I didn’t like it—if I really didn’t
like it—I could go back to Needham.
I got a letter over the summer to
come to soccer preseason tryouts. I’d
been assigned a big sister who was in the
senior class and who, by coincidence,
was on the soccer team and would be at
those tryouts. From the first moment on
the first day of soccer preseason, I just
fell in love with the place and the people.
Besides the incredible friendships I
have made, one thing that I value about
my association with Nobles—particularly
in my previous role as a faculty member
and coach, and now, as a board member—
is the school’s resistance to complacency and the desire to grow. We’re not
afraid to push ourselves to get better.
That doesn’t mean simply more
achievement—because I think achievement is tricky. It’s “Can we meet our
mission better?” And that means
not just from statistical measures
and data points, but examining the
values. Are graduates becoming leaders for the public good? What is their
intellectual engagement and their
sense of connection to others?
I have been asked about being the
first woman to lead the board, but I
don’t consciously think about it until
someone reminds me of it. I’m aware
of it—but in my world [law], there are
plenty of female leaders, and when I
think of Nobles, I certainly think of
female leaders. I appreciate that my role
is a milestone. We’ve been very fortunate with the leaders we’ve had on the
board and at the school, that they value
all perspectives and have a sensitivity to
details like when we schedule meetings—how that affects people with child
care responsibilities, which are increasingly shared by both men and women.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about
our differentiators. As a graduate and
as an educator, I believe Nobles does
a phenomenal job of preparing its
students to be excellent speakers and
presenters. They get used to speaking
to adults and in front of groups. They
learn to read a room, to listen with
respect, and to engage as a contributing member of a small or a large group.
I think these skills are going to be at
a premium, and there will be a shortage
of them as we see more and more people
communicating without actually making
eye contact and being in someone else’s
presence. [Students] learn to read body
language largely because of the work we
do in our classrooms and in assembly and
as a community to make sure we’re paying attention to each other’s feelings. I’m
really intrigued by how we can seize an
opportunity to equip our kids to be excellent leaders because they’re comfortable
communicating human to human.
At Nobles, we have this nice tradition
where the current and past presidents
of the board get together for lunch in
the spring. When we got together last
May, all of the living previous heads
and I were there, and we talked about
the decision to coeducate. I’m sure
they were met with deep opposition
about how we would be changing the
core identity of the school and the
fundamental aspects of our mission.
Their foresight and courage in making that decision is extraordinary.
I’m amazed at the degree to which
we had the right people at the right
time, the right heads of the board and
the right heads of school, to achieve
coeducation as successfully as we have.
I hope there’s a way to honor what
has been done. We have emerged as
an unbelievably impressive institution largely because of that decision.
As told to Heather Sullivan, director of
communications during a recent interview. Board president Beth Reilly ’87 is
a partner at WilmerHale in Boston; her
practice there focuses on intellectual
property litigation. Reilly is a wife and
mother and leader. Prior to her career in
law, she taught and coached at Nobles,
serving as history department chair
and varsity soccer and softball coach.
35
ALICIA SIMONI ’97
Healing Women
Worldwide
Alicia Simoni ’97 turned 25 in Kabul. After graduating from Johns Hopkins,
an unpaid internship at a small international women’s rights nonprofit in
Washington, D.C., evolved into working in Afghanistan on women’s rights
awareness. Simoni pursued a master’s in peace studies, focusing on gender
issues in the aftermath of war and conflict, “specifically, ensuring that women’s unique needs were met,” explains Simoni. “That their voices were heard,
and that they were actively and equally involved in the process of rebuilding
communities and societies after war.”
Simoni worked abroad—including stretches in Europe and Africa—learning the power of an empathetic ear. “I spent countless hours listening as men
and women in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Uganda discussed the horror of witnessing a child’s murder or the terror of beatings meted out by rebel
soldiers or at the hands of a husband. I observed an obvious positive effect
when individuals had the opportunity to share their stories and their suffering, to see and be seen by another,” reflects Simoni.
Simoni switched from macrolevel
peace-building to micro, and she now
works as a psychotherapist, helping
individuals find peace after trauma. “I
find people compelling, particularly
the ways people confront, struggle
with, and grow from tragedy, loss
and violence. It is this interest that
initially led me into peace studies and
ultimately to social work,” she says.
Simoni loves witnessing the
resilience of individuals. She herself is
resilient: When Simoni was 10 years
old, her mother was murdered in Walpole, Mass., resulting in an unresolved
case. “I felt unmoored after losing my
mom,” says Simoni. “Finding ways
to be in community with other women, to help other women, and to address
women’s concerns has helped me immensely in my own healing process.”
She began healing at Nobles. Erika Guy and Maura Sullivan’s “pizza
group”—a support group for students who have lost loved ones—was one of
the only places she discussed her mother’s death: “Having this space was profoundly important for me and I think played a part in how I carried that loss
inside of me and was able to allow it to impact me in transformative ways,”
says Simoni. She is grateful to Nobles for the emotional support she received
from both students and teachers. “During a time in my life when I was particularly vulnerable, I felt like each of them in their own way was looking out
for me. I felt like they truly cared, and I really needed that.”
36
LAURA NELSON ’07
A Scholar in Full
I grew up thinking that being appointed
a Rhodes Scholar was slightly more
prestigious than being elected President of the United States (though some
may manage both). As a college senior,
I thought briefly of applying to be one
myself, then smacked myself down
for myopia. More recently, I was able
to live vicariously: My former student
Laura Nelson ’07 had been elevated to
apotheosis; she was headed to Oxford.
By the time her appointment came,
however, I wasn’t all that surprised. She
had managed weeks of interviews and
essays four years earlier to become a
Jefferson Scholar at the University of
Virginia, had “walked on” to a Division I
field hockey team, had earned national
press coverage by organizing a series of
“flash seminars” that elevated the academic climate at UVA, and had become
a significant marketing symbol for the
college so that admission types would
crow to prospective freshmen, “Well,
our former student Laura Nelson managed….[followed by a range of different
accomplishments].” So a Rhodes? Nothing special. At present, she’s pursuing a
doctorate at Harvard in American Studies focusing on problems with contemporary education. She may well be the
individual who sorts out that quagmire.
At Nobles, Laura was a magical student, the kind that teachers love to work
with, but who comes along only occasionally in a career. She was, first and
foremost, interested. Remarkably, she
was interested in what I was interested
in. She probably was interested in what
each of her teachers was interested in.
Not only was she interested, but she was
willing to work hard to master the bits
of knowledge and skills I dished out. In
class, she was someone who listened
with a palpable sense of energy. She was
always smart enough, but smarts were
almost a minor part of the package. What
earned her Jefferson and Rhodes recognition was the complete package—a mix
of curiosity, enthusiasm, gregariousness,
humility—a package fairly bursting with
creative ideas.
The concept of “risk” (as in something that occasions fear or uncertainty)
never seemed to exist for Laura, as
if she ignored the scope of the stage
on which she was acting. When she
got something in her head, degree
of difficulty vanished. Perhaps deep
down she harbors nervousness or
tentativeness, but it never surfaces.
There’s a simplicity and directness in
the way she sees the world, a perseverance, a mental toughness of the kind
that I find extraordinary. She eschews
statements of personal truth in favor of
questions; she wants to find out more.
She embodies a paradox: Her energy is
ubiquitous, tasks are pursued with verve,
but her ego is masked by a kind of Socratic
belief that none of us knows the answer.
A perhaps inappropriate metaphor
for her sense of focus: I recall watching her play field hockey. She had the
ball and was advancing quickly on the
opponent’s goal, advancing with a degree
of determination that scared me for her
safety. She’s a slight girl, and I’m a big
individual, but if I had been opposing her
on that field, I would have simply gotten
out of her way. “Determined” doesn’t
do her justice. Resolute? Purposeful?
Dauntless? Gritty? I don’t have the
words, but I recognize the fierceness of
her commitment to everything she does.
—DICK BAKER
PA M I N A G O R B A C H ’ 8 3
Fighting HIV at Home and Abroad
While I talked with Pamina Gorbach ’83,
a blizzard swirled outside my window.
Outside Gorbach’s window, it was 80
degrees and sunny. “I guess after almost
20 years I’m ready to call myself a
Californian,” she laughed. Gorbach is a
professor and researcher at the Fielding
School of Public Health and David Geffen School of Medicine at the University
of California, Los Angeles. She had just
returned from a week in Cambodia—
with temperatures in the 90s—training
students, professionals and leaders in
HIV prevention. She has been working there since the height of their HIV
epidemic in the mid-1990s.
Gorbach’s parents were her role
models: Her father is an infectious disease physician and researcher
at Tufts, and her mother
worked for the Massachusetts Department of Public
Health. Gorbach lived in
Chestnut Hill during high
school, though her family
spent time in India, England,
California and Chicago for
her father’s research.
Initially, Gorbach wasn’t drawn to
science. During her undergraduate years
at Brown, she avoided those subjects.
After graduation, she spent a year in
Peru, which sparked her decision to get a
master’s in international health at Johns
Hopkins, followed by a DrPH at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
She researched women’s reproductive
health, specifically sexually transmitted
diseases. Then she became an Infectious Disease Fellow at the University of
Washington and started studying HIV.
King Holmes, Gorbach’s mentor at
the University of Washington, felt, “You
can’t just study disease. You need to see
it.” In her training, she bridged clinical
research training with epidemiology.
“Clinical sciences can’t really understand why somebody presents with a
certain condition, how they acquired it,
and how they can transmit it, without
knowing the full context of a patient’s
life,” says Gorbach. Yet behavioral science requires
an understanding of the
clinical context
and biological outcomes to have the
most public health
impact. So Gorbach
tried to integrate fields
in her training, and continues to as a professor and researcher.
Gorbach has received grants from
the National Institute on Drug Abuse to
study HIV and substance use. “The rate
of HIV infection among minority men is
way out of proportion in comparison to
37
their size in the community,” states Gorbach, “and this can’t be explained by just
behavior.” Recently she received funding
for a research platform to study minority men who have sex with men in a
cohort and storing biological and behavioral data in a repository. “We’re trying
to create a broad wealth of information
and data to contribute to scientific questions of today and those that will emerge
in the future,” says Gorbach. Through
studying the same men, Gorbach will
be able to see how health disparities
and HIV affect other infections, aging,
chronic diseases and cancer.
While Gorbach may not have
embraced science at Nobles, she fostered
long-lasting friendships and learned
the importance of getting outside every
day. “I loved that we had to walk from
the main school building to the Castle
for lunch—rain, shine, snow or sleet,”
says Gorbach, who remembers struggling down the icy path to the athletic
center with her skis. “Those are memorable high school moments, and I think
they make you tougher.” Even after
two decades on the West Coast, Gorbach hasn’t lost her New England edge:
She encourages her children to bike to
kindergarten every day, even in the rain,
when everyone else in Los Angeles jumps
into cars, afraid of a few sprinkles.
Clinical sciences can’t really understand
why somebody presents with a certain
condition, how they acquired it, and how
they can transmit it, without knowing
the full context of a patient’s life.”
—PAMINA GORBACH ’83
LAURA HAJAR ’95
Picture This
What did you learn at Nobles that affects
your work today?
Photography! My first photography class
was Photo IV, back when the darkroom
was in the Castle. I still have the negatives and contact sheets from my first
assignment. I photographed some
ducks at a pond near my home. Mr. [Joe]
Swayze wrote “Hallmark!” on the contact sheet. I took as many photography
classes as I could at Nobles and haven’t
put down my camera since.
Describe the interplay between photography and your interest in public health.
After I graduated from Davidson College,
I attended a documentary photography
program at Salt in Portland, Maine. I
knew I wanted to pursue photography as
a career, so I moved to Memphis to work
at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
At that point, I didn’t have much interest
in health care. I was shooting everything
from surgery to actor Jim Carrey giving a
patient a foot massage.
As I got to know patients and their
families, I learned more about their
experiences in the health care system.
St. Jude is not typical—it is funded by
38
donations and the costs of care, housing
and transportation are covered. Families never receive a bill. I don’t think I
really grasped the extraordinariness of
this model until I visited other pediatric
oncology clinics in other countries.
In 2008, I traveled to El Salvador with
an oncologist who was interested in the
state of pediatric palliative care in the
developing world. One day we set out
with a nurse and a child-life specialist
from the oncology clinic at the children’s
hospital in San Salvador. We drove to the
rural home of a 5-year-old boy who was
in the end stages of a brain tumor. The
patient and his father had been making
the two-hour journey, some of it on foot,
to San Salvador every week for nearly
two years to receive chemotherapy and
radiation treatment. The nurse talked
to the parents about how to keep their
son comfortable. The child-life specialist
checked in with other family members to
see how they were doing. The boy shared
a bed with his oldest sister. I heard from
the nurse that he passed away about a
week later, most likely with his sister
sleeping beside him.
There were so many things racing
through my head that day. I wanted to
better understand the myriad cultural,
political and socioeconomic factors
that played a role in this little boy’s
story. Most important, I wanted to take
photographs that could help deepen
other peoples’ understanding about what
health care systems can do to support
families like this one.
It was after that trip that I decided
to pursue a master’s degree in public
health, which I received in 2012 from
Boston University. I continued shooting
during graduate school, working with the
nonprofit Malaria No More on mosquito
net distribution campaigns in Senegal,
Ghana and Burkina Faso. More recently,
I’ve been working here in Boston with the
Pine Street Inn, following a few of their
chronically homeless guests as they transition from life in a shelter to permanent
housing. I feel that my understanding
of public health and social systems has
helped me to become a more compassionate and discerning photographer.
How does your experience as a woman
affect your approach to work and art?
Early in my career, it was not uncommon
to be the only woman covering a press
conference or sporting event. I learned
quickly to stand my ground.
What else about your Nobles experience
or your journey would you like to share?
I did an independent study with Mr.
Swayze my senior year. I was shooting
rolls and rolls of film but hadn’t been
spending much time in the darkroom.
Swayze announced he was putting me on
a “darkroom tether” to encourage me to
print more of my images. I always think
about that—in part because I still don’t
print my images often enough, but even
more so because for me, the thing I have
always loved most about my work is the
connection I make with people and my
environment when I’m taking photographs. There’s nothing like it.
—HEATHER SULLIVAN
See Hajar’s work at www.laurahajar.com
SASHA GEFFEN ’07
A Writer of Consequence
It was in high school that Sasha Geffen
’07 realized, “Writing made me feel
useful. My way to say something interesting and be helpful to people was
through words.”
Geffen, a freelance music writer and
editor whose main gig is with Chicagobased online publication Consequence
of Sound (CoS), credits English teachers
Dick Baker and Tim Carey with teaching
her to write. She was an arts writer for
The Nobleman her senior year but didn’t
think there was “a viable future” in the
pursuit. Then a French teacher named
Avery Rueb recommended she check
out Pitchfork, a Chicago-based online
music and culture publication. “It’s this
one moment I remember, when I started
reading Pitchfork,” Geffen says. “Now
I’m writing for them.”
Geffen says she wishes more people—
especially young writers at Nobles—
knew about the feasibility of writing
as a craft. The recipient of multiple
writing awards, both at Nobles and at
the University of Chicago, she recalls
the dues she paid at less glamorous
jobs. “You think about writing fiction
or becoming a novelist, and that’s this
romantic ideal that is very rare and
hard to get to,” she says. “There’s this
whole other world of technical writing or freelance writing that’s not so
lucrative, and that’s how I started.”
She wrote blog content and produced
real estate writing before racking up
bylines for a long list of respected digital
music publications like Impose, Wondering Sound, Noisey and Interview.
Now a prolific and provocative writer
with a strong following of her own, Geffen says she owes much of her success
to Twitter. “Honestly, I think Twitter
helped my writing career more than
college did,” @sashageffen admits wryly.
Gone are the days when a writer’s only
39
launching pad is to land the perfect editorial assistant job. “You can strike out
on your own, and if you follow certain
writers who are doing that, the pathways
become more obvious, because we live in
a time when you can follow the minutiae
of people’s thoughts on Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr,” she says.
As a writer and editor for CoS, Geffen
enjoys sharing her unique perspective
on a piece of music. “Reviewing
an album is telling the story of your
interaction with a piece of music, which
I find very powerful and challenging—
how and why an album hits me the way it
does. Knowing there are people who
find the way that I look at music interesting or helpful or inspiring has been
humbling.”
When Geffen interviews artists,
she enjoys sharing those perspectives
with listeners to amplify their experience with the music. “You don’t want to
explain away all the mystery of a piece
of art, but music can sound better when
you know where it came from, when you
get some insight as to who the artist is,
why they make music, and what they’re
trying to do,” she says.
Given a year to write and a studio in
the city of her dreams, Geffen
says she’d write a book about the
history of gender expression in
pop music, post-glam. “Exploring how gender politics has
evolved since the 1970s would be
a huge project, but one I’m interested in looking at. Telling new
stories that are helpful to people
who have historically been
displaced is exciting because
we’re treading new territory, but
there’s much left to do.”
Looking ahead, who is she following in 2015? “English artists’
collective PC Music, Mississippi
hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, and
always, Kanye.”
—KIM NEAL
40
SHE COMPUTES
15 alumnae have won or shared the
Greenough Prize for Excellence in Mathematics
since the school first admitted girls in 1974.
N
MICHAEL TURNER
MUSIC
Since: 1988
STEVEN TOUBMAN
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1981
RICHARD BAKER
ENGLISH
Since: 1971
RICHARD NICKERSON
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1974
DEB HARRISON
SCIENCE
Since: 1981
BEN SNYDER
HISTORY
Since: 1989
DECADESof
TILESY HARRINGTON
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1977
These faculty members have served 25
years or more and helped build Nobles
as we know it. They are all outstanding
teachers—but they can also claim
other titles: mountain climber,
seamstress, musician, traveler, coach,
horticulturalist, activist, lepidopterist,
artist and friend, among others.
JOHN GIFFORD ’86
ASSISTANT HEAD OF SCHOOL
AND HEAD OF MIDDLE SCHOOL
Since: 1990
DEDIC ATION
WILLIAM KEHLENBECK
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1975
VICTORIA SEELEN
ENGLISH
Since: 1989
MARK HARRINGTON
CLASSICS
Since: 1976
THOMAS RESOR
ENGLISH
Since: 1986
WILLIAM BUSSEY
PROVOST AND ENGLISH
Since: 1987
MAURA SULLIVAN
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1989
ROBERT KERN
SCIENCE
Since: 1978
SHEILA MCELWEE
SCIENCE
Since: 1987
STACEY TURNER
MATHEMATICS
Since: 1988
ART CREDIT
graduate news
NOTES & ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM CLASSMATES
Graduate
Notes Policy:
■■ Send graduate updates
and photographs to your
class correspondent
if you have one.
■■ Digital photographs
must be high-resolution
JPEG images (1MB+)
to appear in print.
■■ Editorial staff reserves
the right to edit, format
and select all materials
for publication, to
accommodate eight
decades of classes in
the magazine.
■■ For more information,
please visit the
Graduate Notes page
on our website at www.
nobles.edu/gradnotes.
1940
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Percy Nelson
617-244-4126
percylnelson@comcast.net
1941
The recently published 378 Years
in America chronicles the history
of the Waterman Family and business, and offers the perspectives
of Frank Waterman III ’41 on the
future of America. For more information, visit BespokeHistory.com.
1942
1950
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
CLASS CORRESPONDENTS
Putty McDowell
781-320-1960
pbmcd2@verizon.net
Peter Briggs
513-474-2520 hbriggs@cinci.rr.com
1946
Sid Eaton Jr.
503-223-7548
sidandmeg@msn.com
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Gregg Bemis
505-983-7094
gbemis@swcp.com
Gregg Bemis writes, “News this
winter is rather brief. Dick Lucas
is in Arizona seeking warmer
weather than in Pennsylvania and
hoping to lower his golf score.
He will succeed in at least one
of these efforts. I’m scheduling
a dive trip to St. Lucia in April as
my golf score is beyond redemption. Hopefully, with only 16
months until our 70th, we can
all start planning to attend.”
1948
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Bill Bliss
781-326-1062
wlbliss@comcast.net
1949
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
John Guilbert
520-887-0628
Please refer to Memoriam section
for the obituary of Seth Newton.
Sid Eaton reports a spring, summer and fall of trips, all stateside:
in May, with his bride, Meg, to his
60th reunion at Princeton, where
he saw his Nobles classmate
Eddie Stimpson and his soonto-be-bride; in July, to a nearby
Kaiser Hospital, where his gall
bladder was successfully, quickly
and almost painlessly removed; in
September, to New York City, as
the guest of three former students
with whom he had traveled the
nation in 1963, followed by a week
in Maine, the high point of which
was a visit to the Center Harbor
Boatyard, where a 70-foot day
sailor was being built for Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry; finally,
in October, to Phoenix, where he,
with two friends, took in a week of
fall baseball watching future major
leaguers for but $6 per game and
$3 per hot dog. Next trip: this May,
for our class’s 65th reunion.
Jack Hoag reports having
traveled to Washington, D.C.,
for Harvard’s football victory
over Georgetown and to Harvard
Stadium for all of Harvard’s home
games, victories all. Future trips
are being planned for Alta, Utah,
where the skiing is great; to the
south, where he hopes to see
Dudley Hall; to the Friday-night
dinner of our class’s 65th reunion;
and then to his summer home at
Squam Lake, N.H.
Jack Whiting reports celebrating his and Jill’s 60th wedding
anniversary at the house of their
son in Medway, Mass., and the
July birth of their second greatgranddaughter.
Ralph (Tad) Powell Jr. reports,
“I continue to enjoy teaching
about two-thirds time here, at the
University of Minnesota Medical
School, doing diagnostic pathology
and a small amount of research.
I leave in a few days to go on the
annual skiing trip to Beaver Creek,
Colo., with our two youngest
sons and my wife’s brother. Our
youngest son, Nate, defends his
research at noon tomorrow, on his
way to getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience here at the University of
Minnesota. I continue to enjoy
good health, perhaps better than
I deserve. I am looking forward to
attending our 65th reunion. I am
delighted to hear that so many of
my classmates seem to be happy
and in good health.”
Ned Almy reports, “Two
grandchildren’s weddings (see
Ted Almy ’75), a cruise of the
Baltic and celebrating 20 years at
the Landings on Skidaway Island.
It is hard to believe how fast the
years go by. Nancy and I will
celebrate 60 years of marriage in
June with all of our children and
grandchildren at the Landings.”
for the obituary of Bruce Palmer.
1951
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Galt Grant
781-383-0854
galtgra@gmail.com
1952 & 1953
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Winston “Hooley” Perry
perrydise@tampabay.rr.com
From Hooley Perry: “Lately I have
spent so much time orchestrating
the ’52 & ’53 Nobles Plymouth
Class Luncheon in September, and
then sending out the many photographs taken at the event to the
attendees, in addition to sending
copies of ‘The Putnam Legacy’ CDs
out to every one of the nonattendees, that I just couldn’t find the
time to put together a complete
submittal of my usual rambling
notes about most everyone of you
in time for inclusion in the 2014
winter edition. So, due to time
constraints on my and the school’s
part, and in an effort to fill in those
gaps over the next few months, I
will be blasting out brief interim
email updates on what everyone
is doing, and/or has done, so that
all of you will be up-to-date with
the latest and the greatest news of
every one of your classmate’s lives
(so you might want to save them).
The latest exclusive group to
be established within our far-flung
classmates is ‘The Stent Club.’ For
those of you who have not had
the pleasure of experiencing this
helpful, and sometimes necessary,
medical procedure, a stent is a
very small spring (about the size of
the spring in a ballpoint pen) that
is inserted into your body’s arteries
to open up veins that are mostly
blocked up with ‘bunches of stuff’
(that’s a medical term) caused by,
or related to, living the good life.
Our latest initiated member is Hal
Knapp ’52, who recently had one
stent installed. Now, in the past, I
have had four stents installed, and
I know that earlier this year, Bob
‘Stretch’ Cumings ’52 had about
five or six put in, which only goes
to show you who is living the good
life among us. If any one of you out
there wants to share how many
stents you have floating around
somewhere in your body, please let
me know. In honor of the event, I
just might establish a yearly ‘Stent
Cup’ award for whoever has the
most stents. So, Hal, congratulations, and welcome to the club.
Last week, ‘Grum’ Ward’s
lovely wife, Maria, very kindly sent
me a page cut out of the Harvard
Magazine announcing the latest
‘Harvard Medalist’ winners, one
of which is our very own J. Louis
Newell, Harvard Class of 1957. It
went on to say, ‘Whether cheering
from the stands at the stadium, or
chairing the committee charged
with “Making Commencement
Happy” (an interesting committee assignment), you stand
always ready to answer Harvard’s
call, as a stalwart leader of your
class, the Harvard College Fund,
the Harvard Club of Boston, and
the Harvard Varsity Club.’ They
went on to say that ‘Newell could
not be present, but that he will
receive his medal at a later date.’
So, way to go ‘Nails’ (as in ‘tough
as’) Newell. You are the best!
I received the nicest thankyou note, and informative letter,
from Stanley Johnson ’53, in
reply to my sending him a Putnam
Legacy CD. Stanley says that he
and his wife enjoy good health
while living in Baltimore, have
sufficient income to achieve their
goals, and as he happily puts it,
‘We have been lucky indeed,’ in
addition to the fact that with ‘a
marriage, a career, children and
grandchildren, we worked hard at
creating a life that has meaning for
us, and now we are enjoying the
fruits of our efforts.’ Congratulations, Stanley. I would personally
wish that condition on all of us,
and it was a great pleasure to
hear from you after way too many
years. Please stay in touch!
I know that most, if not all,
of you heard the sad news about
the passing of Billy Allen ’53 on
Nov. 6, as a result of his house fire
in Chatham. Billy was a one-ofa-kind type of guy, while being a
great athlete both at Nobles and
Harvard, and a good friend to all of
us. I personally, and I’m sure many
of you who knew him well, will
miss our Cuban amigo. So, vaya
con dios, my friend.
It never ceases to amaze me
how Louis “Nails” Newell always
keeps bouncing back after fighting
so many health battles that would
‘deep-six’ most of the rest of us.
First it’s the loss of the use of his
kidneys, which required dialysis
three days a week for Lord knows
how many months and/or years.
And then it’s months in a hospital
bed fighting off many spreading
infections. And now, because of
those recurring infections, the
doctors had to amputate his right
leg just below the knee. And then,
after just a few days, they had to
perform a special operation on his
lower right leg so that they can
attach a prosthesis to it, so that he
can hop, skip, and jump around the
hospital rehabilitation unit. Will it
never end for this tough guy? Hang
in there, ‘Nails.’ You are an inspiration to all of us.
For those of you who were
wondering about one of our northern classmates, all is well with
Don Atwell, who is now living in a
retirement home and not having
to shovel snow off of his roof or
anywhere else for that matter. His
‘Mainiack’ Telephone Company
has been on strike since October
2014, and they are still arguing
with the Feds, while saying that
they still have service, when, in
fact, they don’t. His new retirement
home number is (207) 256-3060,
graduate news
and his cell is (207) 890-4640
(which works sometimes). He also
purchased a new computer, which
he cannot get adjusted to the point
of sending or receiving emails,
so for the time being, don’t send
emails (until further notice). His
address: P.O. Box 192, Fryeburg,
Maine 04037.”
Hal Knapp ’52 writes: “I am so
sorry to hear of Bill Allen’s passing.
‘Billy’ was a short bike ride from
my house growing up because
we both lived near the edge of Jamaica Pond. So we played together
and looked at black-and-white
albums of Cuban sugar operations.
Too many years passed before
the Cape Cod Nobles reunion. I
stepped out of my car, and there
was Bill saying, ‘Do you know who
I am? I’m Bill Allen.’ Oh, my God.
We hugged. The rush brought
tears. We walked to the hotel to
catch up with too many out-oftouch years. So long, Bill. Hope to
see you again one of these days.
for the obituaries of Billy Allen and
Jack Tucker ’53.
1954
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Peter Partridge
508-548-9418
ppart767@comcast.net
1955
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Bob Chellis
781-237-9436
bchellis@campuscontinuum.com
From class correspondent Bob
Chellis ’55: “Well, I’m writing
Class Notes for April in Decem-
ber—with the Christmas crush
upon us and heading south in
two days. Not much class news
at hand, except that Larry Flood
usually has something going on
and luckily responded when called
that he’s ‘gone off the deep end,
1) creating a totem pole 14 feet
high, carved both sides by a local
Micmac Indian, with traditional
birds and symbols, using a tree
of Larry’s, and painted with the
help of friends, 2) buying two pigs
to raise, 3) hoping to build a root
cellar. Better plan ahead.’ Maybe
we should check back to ask: Plan
ahead for what, exactly? In any
case, that all sounds like fun, and a
fresh take on planning. Maybe it’s
the brisk, stimulating Maine air....
As a class, our focus should
be on planning ahead for our 60th
reunion. Save May 8 and 9. What
will it take to have you all come
from Texas, California, Maryland,
Maine, Florida, New Hampshire,
New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio?
We once shared years of growing
up—how rewarding now to reconvene and see how it all turned out!
Charlie Nichols is generating ideas
to help make it interesting and fun.
And your ideas are welcome and
requested, although by the time
you see this, it may be too late to
make changes. This is an event that
can’t be rescheduled and won’t
be repeated. We’ll try to make
it memorable. Charlie has some
thoughtful ideas to share, along the
lines of ‘this may be our last dance.’
That may be pessimistic, but there
certainly won’t be too many more.
Reunion night, Friday, May 8, is
well done by the school: cocktails,
great hors d’oeuvres and dinner
in the new banqueting hall of the
glamorously buffed-up Castle.
It will be great. All classes 50th
reunion and over are invited, and
it’s a rare chance to see friends
in classes ahead of or behind us.
Saturday offers graduate meetings,
campus tours, an excellent cookout
lunch, the Athletic Hall of Fame
awards, all the spring sports in action and usually an art reception at
4 p.m. If you haven’t been back for
a few years, you’ll be amazed.
On Saturday, May 9, our Class
Dinner will be on our own, offcampus. Join us for drinks, toasts
and dinner, and I’ll see if we can
show Jim Bride’s new films—his
whirlwind 13-minute history called
Nobles: 1866-1983, and The Putnam
Legacy, which is 20 minutes and
is terrific. And maybe also The
Gleason Legacy, 15 minutes. I’ve
booked a great spot: Haven House,
the Dedham Community House,
which is opposite the courthouses in the center of Dedham.
We’ll have the whole main floor
of the historic 1794 house for
our party, and I’ve recruited the
terrific chef-caterer and her staff
from the Club of Odd Volumes.
For starters, in spite of the distance, we’re led to expect that Dave
Fisher, Dick Finlay, Charlie Nichols
and Mike Jonsberg will make it.
Mike is learning to maneuver on his
new prosthetic leg, and if he and
Susan can make it from Maryland,
we hope you can make the effort
too, from wherever! The more of
us there are, the more memorable
the weekend. Even, or especially,
if you’ve never come back to
reunions, we are anxious to see you,
and it may help round out the arc
of your memories. Most of us have
mellowed in a more or less positive
way. The school puts on this party
to gather us in, and we won’t have
many more chances to reconnect. I’m new to Fox Hill’s DVD
purchasing committee. To help
me out, Sandy bought me the definitive book The Best DVD’s You’ve
Never Seen, Just Missed, or Almost
Forgotten. An impressive volume,
and the editor is—drum roll!—Peter M. Nichols, our esteemed but
rarely seen classmate. He’s been
film critic for The New York Times
for years and has edited several
books. At one point he was doing
movie columns every week! Mr.
Eaton would have been proud. If
only he’ll join us in May—please!—
he can help us critique Jim Bride’s
new Nobles documentaries.
So mark your calendars for
May, dig out the old school tie, and
even if you rarely come back, come
back this time! Convenient hotels
in Dedham include the Residence
Inn (Marriott), the Fairfield Inn and
the Dedham Hilton.”
1956
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Gren “Rocky” Whitman
410-639-7551
grenwhitman@verizon.net
Writes John Fritts: “Because of the
diminished use of business cards,
my company was downsized, so
I have retired for a second time.
Instead of driving around Boston’s
Metro-West calling on clients, I
now spend several days a week
driving senior citizens—like us—to
various appointments. They tell
great stories about growing up in
the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ the Great
Depression and World War II.
We welcomed a new grandchild
this past summer. Emerson Rose is
the first child for my son, Tim, and
his wife, Erin, who live in Castro
Valley, Calif. Erin’s job requires her
to travel around the country, so the
baby usually goes with her. I think
the baby has accumulated more
frequent-flyer miles in six months
than I have in five years.
We went to St. Pete Beach, Fla.,
before the holidays and stayed at
the Trade Winds Resort. If you’re in
the area, try the Toasted Monkey
Lounge on Gulf Boulevard. They
love Boston, and huge TVs are
always tuned to the Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics. Just don’t
cheer for the wrong team!”
From Dr. Bob Bach: “Just got a
new knee that works great! With
my new heart valve and knee, I feel
like a walking junkyard, and am
worth a lot for spare parts!” Bob
was awarded the American College
of Surgeons’ ‘Surgical Volunteerism
International Award’ for his decades
of medical service to impoverished
and isolated people in northeastern
Nicaragua. Through his not-forprofit group, Partners in Health of
Maine, he continues to provide
Nicaraguans with free medical care,
equipment and education.
Kit Hayden reports that “after
writing 235 blogs for the online
journal Village Soup, it has become
abundantly clear that the only ones
widely read (and not very widely)
are those dealing with sex. How’s
that for pathetic? ‘Sext me, Gramma!’ On second thought, never
mind. I don’t have a smartphone.”
Tim Leland writes that the
full-time team of investigative
reporters he established at The
Boston Globe 45 years ago is now
at the center of two different
Hollywood movies that are currently in production. The first one,
called Black Mass, after the book of
the same name, stars Johnny Depp
and chronicles the infamous career
of Boston mobster James “Whitey”
Bulger, currently serving a life
sentence for his many murders.
The book was written by Dick
Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (father of
Nobles grad Brian O’Neill ’89 and
Shane O’Neill ’91) when they were
members of the above-mentioned
“Globe Spotlight Team.” Tim
reports that the second Spotlight
movie will tell the story of how the
investigative team uncovered the
Catholic priest sex abuse scandal,
which won the Globe a Pulitzer in
2003. Word is that this second
movie will be named Spotlight.
Both films are due to be released
later this year. The team won its
first Pulitzer Prize in 1970, the first
year of its existence, with Tim
serving as its editor. “When I organized the team
four decades ago, there was a
certain amount of skepticism
about whether it would work,” Tim
recalls. “Some of our colleagues
at the Globe thought it was a bad
idea. They didn’t believe the stories
it produced would be worth the
time or investment required. Gerry
and I and the others on the team
wondered ourselves whether we’d
be able to pull it off. But all these
years later, the team is still going
strong. It’s the longest-running
investigative newspaper unit of its
kind in the nation. I’m very proud
of its contribution to journalism.”
Writes Dave Carroll: “I’m
engaged in a small but exciting
dialogue with Tess Davis, a B.U.
graduate who recently caused a
furor by proving that Sotheby’s
Auction House was planning to
auction a large statue they knew
had been looted from a temple
near Angkor Wat. Our business
concerns my returning to Cambodia a small sandstone, called ‘Head
of a Dancer,’ which my parents
bought from the National Museum
in Phnom Penh in the 1930s.
Ms. Davis reports that U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry is
now involved, and attributes that
to my contacting her to return this
little sculpture. It’s most gratifying
to be useful in this way and to give
something back to the world that
Babs and I have enjoyed since my
mother’s death. Babs and I have
now been alcohol-free for 32 and
25 years, respectively, and are
much happier for it.”
Rocky Whitman and class prez
Fred Wells tried to get together in
Upper Dixie over the holidays, but
time and distance prevented it.
1957
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
John Valentine
413-256-6676
jvalj1@yahoo.com
Editor’s note: We apologize for the
inadvertent omission of the following
note from Lance Grandone in the
most recent issue and have included
it below.
Lance Grandone wrote the following for the winter magazine:
“A brief update: zero hurricanes
so far this year! Hooray! No health
changes for my wife, Karin, and I,
except I have made a conscious
decision to stop trying different
kinds of pain meds for my osteoarthritis and peripheral neuropathy.
Just natural stuff and some OTC
meds from now on. Karin and
our daughter Susan are going to
Ireland for two weeks in October
to visit relatives. I am stuck home
with our dog and Susan’s aggressive Maine Coon cat, which is as
large as our Duffy Dog. Should be
a fascinating two weeks.
On a less happy note, my best
friend and fellow philatelist died
from a massive coronary last month
at age 71, and it really hit me hard
with serious depression. To make
things worse, 10 days later, his widow was diagnosed with very aggressive stage-2 breast cancers requiring
high-dose chemo and radiation. As
they have no relatives or friends in
the area, Karin and I have stepped
up to help with estate matters,
transportation and general emotional support. I mention this not to
get a pat on the back, but to encourage all classmates to maintain loving
relationships with your children and
siblings, and make sure you have
your estate and related instructions
completely in order. This experience
has certainly raised the mortality
issue in a big way. Lastly, I’ve been
trying to encourage our class scribe,
John Valentine, to forsake New
England for a week or two and come
to the Suncoast for a visit. Again,
our house is always open to visiting
classmates and their families.”
Charlie Wiggins writes: The flight not taken
No Masada
No Temple Mount
Just a traveler’s frustration.
(with apologies to Robert Frost)
John Damon, confusing
“tweak” with “tweet”, writes, “Wish
you guys in snow country all the
best of health and happiness for the
New Year.” Then, getting personal
with his hardworking, underpaid
graduate news
class correspondent, he asked,
“What baby costume do you plan
to be wearing when they come
in a sleigh to pick you up for the
Shutesbury First Night extravaganza tomorrow evening?” In an
effort to raise funds to have Dawg
neutered, send your answer to
Price Waterhouse on a ten-dollar
bill. The winner will be awarded
the opportunity of holding the
snippers himself.
Lance Grandone sends greetings from sunny Florida: “What a
great weather year we’ve had here.
No hurricanes! As I write this,
it’s 82 degrees and sunny. I only
wish the rest of the country was
as warm and peaceful, although
even as I read the news, it seems
the national pastime is a new sport
known as ‘murder your fellow
citizens.’ Speaking of reading, I am
up to two to three books per week
on my Kindle Paperwhite. I love it,
and we don’t have to worry about
killing trees. The only problem is
that of becoming too sedentary.
Fortunately, Karin and I still have
good health, although I’m getting
a little creaky in the joints. Our
children, Cass and Susan, are coming in for the holidays, although
Susan is living in Longboat Key, 25
miles up the road, until she finds
a new consulting assignment in
the mining industry. She had the
opportunity for a job in Guinea but
wisely turned it down. Our twin
granddaughters, Megan and Sara,
will also be here this month, but at
different times. Megan graduates
from Tufts in 2015 in biomedical
engineering, and Sara, because
of her dual major in aerospace
engineering and astrophysics,
graduates in 2016. The courses
they are taking make my head hurt.
A far cry from 50 years ago.
Too bad we can’t get the whole
clan together at one time, but
such is the modern world. Karin
and I will be coming to Boston for
Megan’s graduation in mid-May.
I hope some of us (Nobles ’57)
can get together. It would be great
to see the class survivors again. I
warmly remember the great time
we had with the Healers. Other
than that mini-trip, we have no
plans to cruise or take any trips,
so our doors are open to any class
members who get down to the
Suncoast in the next few months.
I send my warmest wishes to all
of you and your families, and wish
good health for you in 2015.”
Robert McElwain writes,
“As I get older, I feel increasingly
drawn to the far north of New
Hampshire and Vermont—north
of the ‘notches’ in New Hampshire
and north of St. Johnsbury in the
Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
This fall, I drove right up past the
Connecticut Lakes to the Canadian
border in New Hampshire at peak
foliage time, soaking up the
incredible scenery and the utter
quiet. I spent a couple of nights in
nearby Averill, Vt. (population: 9),
adjacent to the Canadian border.
There’s hardly any reflected city
light up there, so the night sky and
the Milky Way are awesome. And
depending on traffic, the drive back
down through Crawford Notch
can be awesome too. Will I take a
glider trip in the Franconia region
next fall? I just might.”
John Valentine writes,
“Thanksgiving 2014 lived up to Anthony Quinn’s line from Zorba the
Greek. The young Englishman asks
him if he has any family. Zorba
replies, ‘Wife, children—the full
catastrophe!’ My ‘full catastrophe’
gathered for Thanksgiving dinner.
From Theodore Anghelo Valentine
Chatzipetros (4 months) to John
Wadsworth Valentine Jr. (threequarters of a century), we numbered 10. All marriage vows were
still in place, and from my point of
view, ‘Everyone Was in Love.’*” *Title of a wonderful poem
by Galway Kinnell, who alas died
earlier this year. Robin Williams
also left us. I miss them both and
am very thankful my tiny clan is all
in one piece.
1958
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Chris Morss
knossos@aol.com
From Larry Daloz: “As I write, we
are 40 hours into powerlessness,
thanks to one of the severest
windstorms in decades, ripping
apart and taking down some of the
lanky Doug firs that give the Pacific
Northwest its extraordinary beauty.
But all is stillness now as the gray
morning seeps into our dark and
chilly home. It’s so easy to forget
how vulnerable we all are, how
suddenly everything changes when
the electricity stops or the water
runs out, and the cold begins.
But storms aren’t the only
things that change our lives. Since
our 50th, I have two titanium hips
and a new shoulder. On top of
that, four amazing grandchildren
have arrived, and we now spend
summers back in Vermont with
them. It’s they, more than anything,
who have given me a new reason to
live as long and well as I can. I am
haunted by the prospect that when
they are old enough to understand
the consequences of climate
change, they might ask, ‘But if you
knew about it, why didn’t you do
something?’ So I have been deeply
engaged over the past several years
with many aspects of this work,
leading a team of volunteers to help
build a strong climate movement
here in the northwest, hosting
conferences of climate leaders, and
working with alums of Williams
and Harvard to urge divestment of
fossil fuels. And asking, right now,
you, my fellow classmates, to urge
Nobles to transform its portfolio
from fossil fuels to clean energy. I’m
grateful for allies like Bill Danielson
and Bob Puffer, who understand
the severity of the challenge, and
welcome the companionship of any
other classmates who share this
commitment to our planet’s future.”
Bill Russell writes, “With the
encouragement of the ever-persuasive Chris Morss, I am reporting
two especially happy events that
occurred in my immediate family
during 2014. First, my elder daughter, Whitney (the one who became
a very good flamenco dancer
during the late 1980s and early
’90s, when I was actively playing
flamenco guitar with the Spanish
Dance Theater in Boston), was
married in Maine last August after
a long courtship with Scott Rascoe.
She and I had great fun selecting
the music, which included many
grand celebratory pre-1800 pieces
written to include two trumpets.
Second, younger daughter
Kristen, who, after her Colby graduation in 2006 became a middle
school teacher in a KIPP Charter
School in rural North Carolina, and
then in 2011 moved to Jamaica
Plain to start the KIPP Academy
Boston school with several of
her colleagues, was one of 10
recipients (out of approximately
3,800 KIPP teachers in 162 schools
nationwide) last July at the KIPP
20th-anniversary convention in
Houston of the Harriett Ball Excellence in Teaching Award. Her proud
father was thrilled for her; too few
deserving teachers are honored in
such a way for their effectiveness
and extraordinary dedication.
In late December, I spoke with
Jean-Paul Brisson (N ’57 and
Honorary ’58), who sounded very
well. He joins me in sending best
wishes to all for a happy, healthy
and productive 2015.”
1959
Whit Bond
whit.bond@verizon.net
Buzz Gagnebin
bgagnebin@mac.com
John Gibson
jgib1963@aol.com
Ted Mann reports on his 10 days in
France in the autumn of 2014, half
of that in the Dordogne region and
the remainder in Paris: “My Paris
hotel was in the Bastille neighborhood, and, as I discovered, only a
couple of blocks from the Hotel
IBIS, of fond memory, where the
N’59 in France 2007 Group put up
in the French capital.
One evening in ’07, Dave Perry
and I found ourselves in the lobby,
at loose ends, nobody else in sight,
and the clock inching ever closer to
dinnertime. For David, this hour was
no trifling matter. We set forth on
foot (David was walking fairly slowly at this point) and popped into a
welcoming bistro nearby called ‘Les
Galopins’ for a hearty meal, a good
bottle and warm fellowship.
Fast-forward: ‘Bistro Les
Galopins’ is still there. I invited my
traveling companion Annie to share
with me a sentimental dinner there.
She had never met David, but I told
her about our lifelong friendship
and how much he was missed by all
of N’59. So we hoisted a glass to the
fond memory of friends departed. It
was a nice Côtes du Rhône.”
John Gibson writes, “One of
the benefits of traveling through
Nobles in the 1950s was sharing
the trip with wonderful classmates.
Our class has remained close over
the years. Unfortunately, we lost
one of the best, Richard S. Morse
Jr. (Chip to us), just before Christmas 2014. Here are a few of our
thoughts on losing Chip:”
Selden Edwards shares,
“So many memories of Chip, of
course, at Nobles, and then on to
Princeton, which (both) meant
many reunions. It seems to me that
Chip was the ETP ideal and a New
Englander through and through, a
classically educated hard worker,
a three-sport letter man, a family
man and a high-level professional
who worked to make the world a
better place. What he did with his
fine education—Nobles, Ivy League,
the Navy, his lawyering alone—was
fascinating and inspiring. Chip was
Spes Sibi Quisque to the fullest. In
my last conversation with him a few
weeks ago, I thanked him for being
such a friend. I commented that
when I came late in the game from
a completely different environment, from the provinces, he and a
number of classmates welcomed
me and made me feel ‘like one of
you.’ Then further, ‘You guys knew
exactly how the game was played,
and you were patient with me,
the newcomer.’ I could hear Chip
smiling, and he said, ‘Yes, we knew
where all the places in the outfield
were.’ Solid Chip. Quite a guy.”
Buzz Gagnebin (also a Boston
attorney) added that Chip was
always great to work with.
John Gibson googled Richard S.
Morse and found Chip and his dad,
and sent much of what he found to
classmates by email. John noted
that Chip’s dad was essentially the
king of startups, and Chip’s career
wonderfully followed up on some
of what his dad had done, even to
the point of carrying on work with
preservation and other causes in
Woods Hole. (By the way, Ken
Morse ’64 followed in his dad’s
footsteps also. Ken followed their
dad to MIT.) Larry Gwin, a ’59 classmate
only in the fifth and sixth class
years, and a law school class-
mate of Chip’s, responded and
summed up the feeling of all
classmates: “Chip was one of the
best men I ever knew.” (Larry is a
Vietnam war hero, a leader in the
legendary Army unit “First Calvary” and author of Baptism, one of
the best books to come out of that
war.) Chip will be missed!
Steve Grant writes, “I don’t
consider myself a clubby person.
Lately, however, in spreading the
Henry and Emily Folger story via
my 2014 publication, Collecting
Shakespeare, through talks and
book signings, I’ve been invited to
club a good deal: National Arts,
West Hamilton, National Press,
Cosmos, Sulgrave, University,
Metropolitan, Johns Hopkins
University Faculty, and most
recently the Union League Club in
New York City, created in 1863 to
support Abraham Lincoln and keep
the Union together.
My Amtrak train from D.C.
arrived late in Penn Station. Fifteen
minutes later, in the windy wet
city, the pitiful trickle of taxis led
me to consider an alternate form
of transport. A sleek black Uber
pulled up—but I don’t Uber. With
bags in tow, I folded myself gracelessly into a pedicab and shouted
the address of my destination. The
young driver pumped vigorously
down the bike lane.
Photos from Steve Grant ’59’s book signing
graduate news
When we arrived 10 minutes
and $33 later (I did get a receipt
from the Revolution Rickshaw
Company), the doorman eyed me
suspiciously. He refrained from
extending the courtesy of opening
the plastic flap on my vehicle.
I blurted, ‘An author, here for
the book signing.’
‘Second floor, and you have a
coat check around the corner to
the left.’
Upstairs in the library, authors
were finding their numbered
tables. Collecting Shakespeare and
I were at a table next to Steve
Forbes and his book, Money.
I introduced myself to Forbes
as another Steve. ‘A good name,’
he acquiesced.
Why wasn’t I surprised? At the
University Club I had been signing
books across from Cokie Roberts.
At the Press Club, across from
Ted Olson and Ralph Nader. What
would my subjects Henry and Emily Folger have said about all this?”
for the obituary of Chip Morse.
1960
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Albert Vandam
arvandam2@comcast.net
Lenny Holmes writes, “Life since
our 50th reunion has been good:
2011: U.S. travel, including Alaska,
Florida, D.C., Boston and intermediate points, visiting a number of
classmates along the way.
2012: A 3,100-mile bike tour
from the Pacific to St. Louis on
the Lewis and Clark trail, raising
awareness and funds for Habitat
for Humanity. Thanks to all who
contributed.
Left to far right: Captain Mike Poor ’60 navigates near Naples, Fla.; Lenny Holmes ’60 says here, “Performing my new
profession.”; Art Watson ’64 and wife Carol off Mount Desert Island in Maine last summer; Alexander Caskey ’64 makes
a bourbon toast to honor the spirit of former teacher Bill Biddle.
2013: Substantial volunteer
duties in connection with the America’s Cup. Daughter Melissa worked
for Oracle Team USA and ended
up marrying a Kiwi sail designer.
Completed an intensive course to
become a certified tour guide.
2014: Substantial work
providing tours and services in
San Francisco; major trip to New
Zealand to see Melissa and the
country; continued to observe and
enjoy the growth of Danielle’s two
daughters; expanded volunteer
efforts by driving seniors to their
local errands and doctors in the
community minibus.
2015: Will do another charity
ride for Habitat for Humanity from
San Francisco to Atlanta: 3,300
miles in two and a half months.
Wish us luck and contribute generously if you feel the spirit.
Ongoing: I continue to appreciate the good fortune of a superior
education, strong Puritan work ethic,
excellent health, and the rewards of
family and friends worldwide.”
Barry Treadwell writes, “Deb
and I plan to be at Nobles this
spring for our unbelievable 55th
reunion! We had a very busy summer, as I was the general chairman
for the 34th USGA Mid Amateur
Championship at the Saucon Valley
C.C. This was our seventh USGA
Championship, but we never had
one as busy as this one. We had
264 players for practice rounds, and
then two days of medal play for 64
places, for four days of match play.
We used two of our three courses
and had 600 volunteers. It was a
big success but a great deal of work.
We had Lou Holtz as our guest
speaker, and he was terrific. Deb
and I will be at our place at Hammock Dunes in Palm Coast, Fla., for
the winter. See you all in the spring.”
1961
wife Tally, abetted the miscreant’s
prevarications by treating him to
a sumptuous steak dinner at Park
Square in Boston.
1963
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Jim Lehan
508-520-1373
jblehan@aol.com
1964
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Ned Bigelow
781-704-4304
moe9817@aol.com
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Jim Newell
802-467-3555
newell43@gmail.com
1962
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
David Mittell
damittell@gmail.com
Fed up with more than half a
century of D.A. Mittell’s broken
promises to visit his estates in
El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 15, 2015,
Roger Brown, accompanied by his
Art Watson reports that he and his
wife, Carol Golubock, have been
off cruising on their “tiny” sailboat.
They left their homeport near Annapolis, Md., last June and sailed
to Canada and back. Last fall, after
a brief respite ashore, they headed
south with hopes of wintering in
the Bahamas. Art says, “Hopefully
as you read this, we will be headed
northward, nearing Chesapeake
Bay and the conclusion of a great
adventure!”
Franklin Reece writes, “I still
relish the time we shared together
at our 50th reunion last year.
Wonderful memories of long ago
were rekindled while we gave birth
to new ones. Thank you Class of
’64 for making 2014 a very special
year. The year also saw the birth of
our first grandson, Franklin Thompson Reece (N 2032?), and my
startup of a new business initiative
called Interim Executive Solutions.
We provide leadership to nonprofits in transition. Currently, I serve
as the interim executive director of
the Cambridge Historical Society
and was in the same role at Tower
Hill Botanic Garden when we met
for our reunion. I urge anyone who
is post-retirement and wishes to
find a way to move off the sidelines
and back into the game to get in
touch with us at www.interimexecu
tive.solutions. It would be great fun
to give back to the nonprofit world
together. My best wishes to all for
a happy and healthy 2015.”
Alexander Caskey writes, “Our
50th reunion generated such intense warmth that I felt we needed
a way to keep the momentum
going. I built the website for my
college class, so it seemed a good
idea to do the same for the Class
of 1964. Rick Farlow, stellar editor
of our classbook, agreed to join the
effort, so we are now a team and
close to launching. Initial focus is
on our 50th (with photos, videos
and other materials supplied by
John Riley, Ned Bigelow, Clint
Smith, B. Wolbach and others). Isa
Schaff (school archivist) and former Nobles faculty member James
Bride are helping us construct a
section on the Nobles faculty of
our day, and we expect to include a
blogging/comment component to
make the site a forum for communication and exchange, rather than
just an archive. We’ll announce the
launch by email.
In early October of 2014,
Matthew Schmid ’65, Jim Summers ’65 and I trekked to New
Hampshire for a climb to Crag
Camp, the epicenter for the Nobles
Outing Club winter climbing during
the Bill Biddle years (late ’50s
to mid ’60s). At Crag Camp, we
spread some of Bill’s ashes, recited
some of his favorite poems, shared
bacon (a staple for any Biddle-led
trip) and toasted his memory with
bourbon (another Biddle favorite).
For more information about the
Biddle years, and to learn about
the Biddle Outdoor Leadership
Fund, which benefits Nobles,
please visit www.biddlefund.info.”
1965
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Jim Summers
jim.summers@gmail.com
Jim Summers shares, “Hello y’all.
I’m your new class correspondent.
Don’t ask me how or why, but I am.
With our impending 50th reunion,
I have thought much about my
experiences at Nobles and, more
generally, about my experiences as
a private-school student. As some
of you may remember, I had attended the Belmont Hill School for
the fifth, sixth and seventh grades.
I was, therefore, in private schools
for a total of eight years. Back then,
being a preppie was my normal—
the usual, the ordinary. I took it all
for granted. Now, looking back, I
appreciate that being at a school
such as Nobles was anything but
ordinary. It was utterly extraordinary. All of it—the good, the bad
and the ugly. That aside, my classmates, it is my hope that as many
of you who are able will choose
to gather together on May 8 and
9—our 48 Hours. For the majority
of us, it will be the last time we
will see each other in our lifetime.
‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
/ Old time is still a-flying…’ (R.
Herrick). Come ye all. Celebrate
ourselves and make merry.”
Bill Sargent writes, “My 20th
(!) book just came out. It is called
Islands in the Storm and is about
how barrier beach communities
fared before, during and after Hurricane Sandy.”
John Martin reports, “In
the accompanying photo, I am
getting ready to warm up for the
Oklahoma City head race this fall.
[A head race is a time trial race,
which is typically 5,000–10,000
meters in length.] Didn’t do very
well, but I didn’t finish last, and
I had a great time. On the road
to recovery following a hospitalinduced, gram-negative E. coli
blood infection early last year. Currently in Florida deciding important
things, like whether to lose another
few pounds to race level (no age
handicap) as a lightweight in
sprints this spring. Ain’t retirement
grand?” [Note from Jim Summers:
Several years back, John incurred a
major injury that required shoulder
reconstruction. He was told at the
time that he would never row again.
Two years of intensive rehab later,
John “... took a bronze against good
competition at old man’s nationals...”
That’s rarefied territory.]
Ben Fox writes, “I’m still skiing
with my beloved Claire Barker and
still teaching GED. I am looking forward to a trip to Armenia,
where my great-grandfather will
be honored for his role in speaking
out against the genocide. I happily
anticipate our reunion.”
Rick Railsback writes, “My
recent activities have very much
revolved around welcomed new
professional obligations. Having
invested heavily in the development of new skills in recent years,
I’ve been greatly heartened by
strong interest in my experience
and appreciation for the impact
of my coaching. What a joy it has
been to reinvent oneself at this
age and be able to bring value
into peoples’ lives. My personal
experience strongly suggests what
the world’s spiritual traditions have
always taught, that unprecedented
levels of satisfaction come from
helping others. A pity, in a way,
that it’s taken me 67 years to learn
this, but, hey, I’m only 67!”
Rick Weinberg reports, “I am
still living in the same house that
I built in 1970 in Bath, N.H., with
my wife, Barley. I have three adult
children: two boys, who are part-
graduate news
1969
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Peter Pach
860-267-9701
pbp06456@sbcglobal.net
1965
Clockwise from top left: John Martin warms up for the Oklahoma head race, fall 2014;
Islands in the Storm, the 20th book for Bill Sargent; (left to right) Matt Schmid ’65,
Alexander Caskey ’64 and Jim Summers ’65 at Pinkham Notch; “Flyboarding for ’65ers;
move it or lose it.” –Rick Railsback; Jim Summers with daughter Becca in NYC; Rick Weinberg ’65
ners in a custom ski manufacturing
shop (rompskis.com) in Crested
Butte, Colo., and a daughter who
lives in Melbourne, Australia, and
is an environmental scientist. All
three are married, and we have
three grandchildren. I am looking
forward to our reunion.”
Matt Schmid writes, “I
stay preoccupied with multiple
volunteer activities in the Town of
Dover: recycling and Lyme disease
committees, library and land con-
servation issues, and work at the
Council on Aging.”
Mark Emerson writes, “I’m
looking forward to our 50th reunion
in May and would enjoy seeing any
classmates who visit south Florida.”
[Note from Jim Summers: One of
Mark’s passions is golf. If you’ve got
’em, bring your golf clubs.]
Steve Fisher reports, “I am
ever grateful for being given the
opportunity to begin anew with a
marriage to Cynde Reilly, planned
for the fall, and a new home that
we have just moved into in the
same neighborhood of Westford,
Mass. Of course, the real beginning anew is a daily meditation
practice, now over 20 years old,
and lived breath by breath.”
1966
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Ned Reece
ned4047@sbcglobal.net
1967
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Drew Sullivan
781-461-1477
drewsull49@aol.com
1968
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Andy Lord
617-899-3948
ajliii@hotmail.com
From class correspondent Peter
Pach: Peter Gates wrote to say he
is bolstering his credentials as a
grandfather. “Our second grandchild was born (to Callie [Gates]
Slocum ’01) in November. Daphne
is her name.”
Mark Haffenreffer is revving
up for another act. He writes, “Life
has taken several turns as I adjust
to a change in family life. I am very
lucky to have someone whom I
have come to know, care for, and
truly enjoy. As many of you know,
my daughter finally succumbed to
her disease, and my former wife
died of breast cancer. I am not in
contact with my son. I have focused on an approach to orthopaedics that prioritizes conservative
exercising that emphasizes gaining
a full range of motion and strength.
This has become a diminishing
consideration in treatment strategies, and the group that suffers the
most from this is those over 55.
I am in the data-collection phase
and feel this has real promise.
More to come, and it looks like
retirement is not around the corner
as once expected.”
Brad Wilkinson reports spending a lot of his days in a state of
bemusement. He has a son who
is turning 40 this year, and Brad
is wondering how the hell that
sneaked up on him when he still
feels like 40 himself. He says he
“now deals with minor issues like
bladder management on long car
trips and thinking that 10 o’clock
at night is past bedtime. At any
rate, still in fine fettle, blessed
with a healthy family, including
three and a half grandchildren, and
nourished by wonderful friends
and rewarding work.” He wishes
all his classmates of 1969 “small
prostates and a happy 2015.”
For my part, the big news in
Middle Haddam this year was
our son Sam being accepted at
medical school for this coming fall,
first in a family of English majors to
branch out into medicine. I somehow have joined a men’s book club,
which at times has managed some
fairly lively discussions—about the
book we read. My favorite (a fairly
short one) has been The Sense of
an Ending, by Julian Barnes.
1970
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Levy Byrd
781-449-7555
levbyrd@comcast.net
1973
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Craig Sanger
917-705-7556
craig.w.sanger@gmail.com
Jed Dawson
508-735-9663
Jeddawson711@gmail.com
Doug Floyd
781-788-0020
doug_floyd@yahoo.com
Ted Almy reports: “Maura and
I are getting used to the idea of
being parents of two married kids.
Grandkids next? Our youngest
(not married) just completed her
master’s degree in advanced practice nursing at Columbia University
and has accepted a position in the
pediatric liver oncology and transplant group at New York’s Mt. Sinai
Hospital. God bless her. She and
her colleagues will be looking after
and trying to heal some very sick
kids. I accomplished a bucket list
item last fall. Had a magical golf
experience at Oregon’s heralded
Bandon Dunes resort. It exceeded
expectations in every way (course
design, setting, lodging, food, comfortable, low-key atmosphere) and
was worth every dollar and hour
of time spent to get there—and I’ll
go back. Played only two of the five
courses. Look forward to seeing
many in May for our 40th.”
Wendy Patriquin writes: “On
January 16, my son, Josh, gradu-
ated from the Boston Fire Academy and is now a proud member
of the Boston Fire Department,
Engine 4, Ladder 24, in the West
End. My Marine has become a
firefighter! His grandfather Wm.
Davis Taylor ’27 would be so
proud. His father and I are beyond
proud and wish him and his wife,
Nan, presently at Lesley Graduate
School, happy, safe and healthy
careers. Our Annie is now 26, an
overanxious bundle of joy. She
is over-the-top excited about
seeing Disney’s ‘Frozen on Ice’
on Valentine’s Day. She will be
spending the night in Dorchester
with Josh and Nan. She is calling
it a ‘date night.’ We also adopted
a rescue pup from Tennessee.
Turns out he is deaf. Mama
Mia—enough with the special
needs already! He is adorable and
naughty, a Jack Russell terrier mix.
My best to all, and I hope I will see
some of you this coming May!”
Please refer to the Memoriam
section for the obituary of Ned Colt.
1976
Tom Bartlett
+44 1908 647196
tom_bartlett58@hotmail.com
1974
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Kevin McCarthy
617-480-6344
kmac56@gmail.com
1975
Andrea Pape Truitt 609-646-5361
apape57@gmail.com
Wendy Patriquin’s son, Josh, with Mayor Marty Walsh and the new fire
commissioner, Joseph Finn
graduate news
Rob Piana
617-491-7499
robert.piana@vanderbilt.edu
1977
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Linda Rheingold
licorh@comcast.net
1978
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Christopher Reynolds
Cell: 800-444-0004
Home: 508-358-7757
chreynolds@comcast.net
Class correspondent Chris Reynolds writes, “Following the loss
of Persis Gleason, Oct. 22, 2014,
the class was strengthened by a
flurry of emails with heartwarming
observations. Many classmates
noted the aching sadness of her
passing, sweetened just slightly by
the realization that she would have
loved the ensuing camaraderie
among busy, far-flung classmates.
Both classmates who sat next to
Persis in assembly for four years,
and those who didn’t know her
well but sensed her determination
to improve the world, lamented
the loss. May we live more wisely
through her memory.”
George Gifford writes, “In
August, Joyce and I celebrated 30
years of marriage with family and
friends. Son No. 1, Canaan, graduated from Skidmore in 2013 and
now lives in Providence. Son No. 2,
Taber, graduates from Bucknell this
spring. Joyce and I have settled
nicely into this empty-nest stuff!”
Debbie and Peter Strzetelski’s
son, Teddy, will be graduating
from Nobles with the class of
2015. Teddy was a tricaptain of the
Nobles football team last fall and
is a co-captain of the boys lacrosse
team. After graduation, he will be
heading to Ithaca to play lacrosse
at Cornell. Debbie serves on the
Nobles Graduate Council, where
she enjoys seeing Laura Hewitt
and Chris Reynolds.
Ever brilliant and zany Cary
Bickley writes, “Because I’m
older now, I believe I know more
about everything than everyone
else, but lately I think some of my
arrogance that comes with age
might be misplaced. According to
my children, I know nothing. I’m
one of those horrible ‘old people’
who can’t deal properly with
technology. Even though I have
an iPhone 6, I’m not cool because
I made the print so big I can only
read a couple of words at a time.
The trash folder in my computer
is entirely ads for Viagra, and I
swear I don’t know what I googled
to deserve that! I’m grumpy often,
my cocktail hour is getting earlier
all the time. By the time I see you
all next, my five o’clock will probably be four. Because I still have a
9-year-old, I’m constantly having
to deal with ‘young mothers,’
and that is annoying because of
their youth and beauty, which is
obviously wasted on them. I actually look pretty good, too. I was
recently mistaken for being 47. I
think that’s because I live in Hollywood and so no longer have any
facial expressions. I think probably
when I had them, they weren’t
all that great. I know you all visit
L.A. sometimes; please call when
you do. Props to John Henderson
who came, and we had a really fun
lunch. I still eat—but only in tiny
portions and only kale products.”
Cary has so much verve, we should
schedule a mini-reunion in L.A.!
Like many classmates, Jennifer
Hagemann is smitten by the sea.
Unlike many, she now lives on it.
“Henry and I took the last three
years off to rebuild our 1937 ketch,
Arabella, and have been living
aboard and cruising for about
a year and a half. Enjoyed the
process, and I now know much
more about wooden boats than
I thought possible. I kept a blog
about the process if anyone wishes
to see photos (www.arabellalife.
com). We’re 23 years into our
business with Juice Plus (the
fruits and veggies in capsules) and
loving the process now more than
ever—such a fun thing to get to
do every day! Our daughters are
done with school, and our youngest gets married this September.
So we’re moving into the next
phase of life, post-college. As I
know others feel, it all happens so
quickly! I continue to ride and train
dressage, working up and down
the East Coast and beyond. In spite
of my parents’ admonitions, I’ve
never been able to get horses out
of my system. We feel blessed
to be happy and healthy, and I so
appreciate my Nobles classmates.
It has meant a lot to hear from
you during Persis’s battle.”
Annie Williams recently retired from a 32-year career in federal IT sales. She notes, “My last
company was bought by Verizon,
and I had no interest in staying on.
I am still living in Virginia, and I
enjoy not working for the time being. I keep thinking I will get bored,
but not yet. My boys are 16 and
19. One is a freshman at Clemson,
and the other is a sophomore in
Woodberry Forest boarding school.
They are great guys. I am engaged
to remarry and will be moving to
Charlottesville, Va., this summer.
I am so sad about Persis, but she
would have loved all the class
camaraderie that has transpired in
her passing.”
Your devoted class agent,
Chris Reynolds, proudly shares
that “Bredt and I are happy. Our
oldest, Cliff, graduated from Tufts
last May and is interning in the
Center for Complex Operations
at National Defense University
in Washington. He continues to
love learning languages, especially
Mandarin. Henry is a third-year
at UVA, joyfully involved in many
extracurriculars and majoring in
Arabic and political philosophy.
Bredt relishes painting, leads
popular water-exercise classes,
and works in textbook design and
publishing. I remain smitten by
venture finance and the innovation
industry. We are all healthy and
count our blessings in this troubled
world! Please ring or email. I am
always delighted to hear from my
Nobles pals!”
1979
John Almy
617-448-3119
jwalmy@comcast.net
Dan Rodgers
212-423-0374
drodgers@wfw.com
1980
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Rob Capone
781-326-7142
robcapwest@comcast.net
1981
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Kim Rossi Stagliano
203-610-1750
krstagliano@charter.net
1982
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Holly Malkasian Staudinger
914-925-2340
hmalkasian@verizon.net
1983
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Nancy Sarkis Corcoran
Home: 508-785-0886
Fax: 508-785-0887
NLSC3@me.com
From class correspondent Nancy
Sarkis Corcoran: “Greetings Class
of ’83. By the time you read this, it
will be time for Reunion Weekend.
I hope many of you will make it
back to campus even though it’s
not a big reunion year for us. (A
reminder: Our 35th is right around
the corner in 2018.) Steve and I have had fun
reconnecting with many alumni
this year as Holden continues to
enjoy his freshman year at Nobles.
Some of the grads we’ve run into
this year: John Montgomery ’83
and Suzie Tayer Montgomery ’84,
Tom Welch ’82, Mark D’Angelis
’82, Betsy Ganong Dawson ’85,
Heather Markey Zink ’86, Jeff
Schwartz ’83, Dan Rice ’82, Betsy
Morris Rosen ’83. We also had fun
reconnecting with Mr. Toubman,
who was Holden’s soccer coach
last fall. He was Steve’s JV soccer
coach back in the day. You may
recall that Mr. Toubman’s first
year at Nobles was our junior year
(1981–1982). He still teaches math
and coaches wrestling and soccer. There are three other alumni
kids in Holden’s Japanese I class, all
Class VI: Sakura Hinenoya (daughter of Haley Clifford Adams ’83),
Samantha Walkey (daughter of Rod
Walkey ’84) and Griffin Zink (son
of Heather Markey Zink ’86). Holden and I really enjoyed the
Nobles fall play, which starred Lou
Moses Mizgerd’s son, Bill (Class I).
Bill was great, as were all the other
actors. We also attended the three
student-directed winter plays.
Hilary Whitman Allinson’s son,
Justin (Class III), starred in one of
the plays, and Hilary’s daughter,
Ashley (Class I), directed one. The
plays and the acting were fantastic.
So many talented kids at Nobles! Last fall, I also attended the
beautiful assembly in honor of
Ted Gleason. It was a very moving
celebration of Ted Gleason’s life
and legacy. So glad to see such
a great turnout, including Sudie
Naimi DiGiovanni, Nancy Lavin
Scheerer, Amy McCulloch Brown,
Haley Clifford Adams, Eliza Gleason Kean, Hilary Harrison, Debbie
Paine Sabin, Wendy Riseborough,
John Stephenson ’84, Mike Young
’81, Bill Motley ’80, Jennifer
Power ’86 and Dan Tarlin (who
sang a few songs as part of the
“old Nobleonians”). I also chatted
with my old advisor, Ned Bigelow
’64, and his wife, Sandy, as well
as my old French teacher, Mrs.
Bernstein. I saw the Floods and Mr.
Carey in the sea of attendees but
missed speaking with them.
Thank you to Ron Cieri, who
checked in from Upstate New York,
where he owns and operates a
cattle ranch focusing on grass-fed
beef. Last fall, he and his farm
were featured in a New York Times
article. He writes, ‘Still loving my
new life as a redneck! My farm has
cattle, pigs, turkey and chicken—
with plans to expand to goat and
hare in 2015. NYC is buying everything I have. If any classmates
are looking for a “city slicker”
weekend, happy to provide.’
Lots of love and best wishes to
all, until next time. Cheers!”
1985
Get ready for our 30th reunion—we
want to see everyone back! It’s
May 9 on campus (of course), and
there will be lots of family-friendly,
free-of-charge things to do that day.
You can play in the men’s graduate
lacrosse game or the women’s
graduate soccer game, or cheer
on classmates in either, neither or
both! Saturday evening, head to the
Castle for a reception for all reunion
classes, to be followed by our class
dinner. Think that’s not enough
fun? Then get started early and join
classmates and daring spouses for
a casual 30th reunion Friday night
cocktail party at the home of Franz
and Marci Griffith Loeber.
1986
Heather Markey Zink
508-359-9553 hjzink@mac.com
Jessica Tyler
781-934-6321
jessicaytyler@gmail.com
Eliza Kelly Beaulac
703-476-4442
embeaulac@verizon.net
From class correspondent
Eliza Beaulac: “Believe it or not,
friends, this time next year we
will be gearing up for—wait, are
you sitting down?—our 30th
reunion. Damn, how about that?
Okay, well, now that I’ve got your
attention, on with the news.”
Chris Downey reports, “All is
well in Houston. In 2015, I will be
working to roll out legal-services
software directed toward the
criminal defense practice in state
and federal courts. I am still
representing the ‘misunderstood
and wrongfully accused’ here in
Houston and have found that the
quality time I spent with fellow
Sixies provided unique and valuable insight, especially with regard
to organized gang behavior. My
children continue to grow and
benefit greatly from their mother’s
good looks and brainpower. I hope
to get back to Bridge Street soon
so that John Gifford can buy me
lunch at the Castle. I’m hoping for
Welsh rarebit, mixed veggies and
pan Jell-O. And I have my fingers
crossed for green bug juice.”
Michael Craig started off 2015
with a little adventure: “Over the
new year, my wife, Betsy, and
I took our daughters, for their
first time, camping and hiking in
Yosemite. Having recently watched
the Ken Burns documentary on
our National Parks, our visit really
brought home the importance for
our generation to work to ensure
we preserve our remaining natural
areas. Our eldest, Vivian, started
high school in the fall at Steve
Jobs’s alma mater, Homestead,
and Edith began her fourth-grade
year at Statford, where Betsy
teaches drama, speech, debate and
art. Since moving to Sunnyvale,
graduate news
1990
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Elena Weiss MacCartee
202-882-2132
eisabelmac@gmail.com
Left: Jeannine Swift Jeffrey’s 7-year-old twins, Peter and Anne; Right: Michael Craig ’86 and family in Yosemite National
Park on New Year’s Eve ’14. From left to right: Edith, Betsy, Michael and Vivian
Calif., almost three years ago, I’ve
had the privilege of working with
Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos
to further our mission to make
actionable health information
accessible to people everywhere
in the world and enable the early
detection and intervention of disease. The year 2015 promises to
be special as we begin to impact
more and more lives.” If you
haven’t seen Elizabeth Holmes’s
TED talk, check it out!
Closer to home, Jeannine
Swift Jeffreys says there’s “not a
lot to report from quiet Falmouth
at present, though I did meet up
with some Nobles folks here this
year. Sue Petro and her family have
a house here, and we see them
often. (It’s hard to believe she
now has two children in college,
including daughter Caroline, who
graduated from Nobles last year.) I
have also happily bumped into
Ellen Mecray a couple of times at
the playground and on the beach.
Perhaps, most surprisingly, I made
the discovery that my daughter
Anne’s friend Madison is the niece
of Katie Keally Cochran! It’s been
very nice getting to know Katie’s
sister, Laura Keally Heywood ’90,
and her family.”
And I think you’ll all join me in
congratulating Andrew Partridge
and his beautiful bride, Haley, on
their marriage last fall. “Things
are as great as they have ever
been for me. My wife, Haley, and
I were married in Cataumet on
October 25. A wonderful group of
Nobles friends and family, both
graduates as well as former and
current faculty, were there to help
us celebrate. Haley, Siena and
I are living in our new house in
North Falmouth with our old dog,
Marcus. We could not be happier,
and we wish everyone the best for
a safe, healthy and peaceful 2015!”
There were wedding bells for
my family in 2014 as well! On July
11, my father and former Nobles
faculty Brian Jones married his
partner of 25 years, Michael
Rocha. It was a picture-perfect
day in Nahant, filled with music
and merriment, and shared with
many devoted friends and family,
including many Nobles grads and
faculty (though we neglected to
organize a photo!). Dad and Mike
spent their “honeymoon” with
my brother, Nat, and me and our
families—so romantic!
I also want to give a shout
out to Steve Jordan and Animal
Planet’s Yankee Jungle, which
aired three episodes at the end
of 2014. What a great show, and
such fun seeing Steve chasing
peacocks and helping out his
friends, Bob and Julie Miner, at
the D.E.W. Animal Kingdom. 1987
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Emily Gallagher Byrne
781-721-4444
egbyrne@verizon.net
1989
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Rachel Spencer
917-921-5916
spencerw@georgetown.edu
rachelwspencer@yahoo.com
Believe it or not, this May will mark
our 25th reunion from Nobles. We
have a great committee working hard to plan a fun weekend
(Brooke Earley Asnis, Christy
Pfannenstiehl Bergstrom, Lia DerMarderosian, Geoff Doyle, Erin
Keith Epker, Alex Gallagher, Suzy
Klotz, Greg Lewis, Lisa Donahue
Rose, Monica Woelfel Stevenson,
and Jen Bigelow Williams). First
and foremost, we want to get as
many of our classmates back to
Nobles as possible. We know
there are some of you who have
not been back since 1990, and
we are hoping you will all return
for this significant reunion. The
weekend will start on Friday, May
8, with an evening party at the
Dedham Country Club Shooting
Shack, thanks to Erin Epker. On
Saturday, come back to campus
and cheer on the Nobles spring
teams and attend a whole host of
activities including a carnival, a
men’s graduate lacrosse game, a
women’s graduate soccer game
and the Athletics Hall of Fame ceremony. Finally, we will all head to
the Castle for a reunion reception
followed by our class dinner. We
hope to see you there.
Evans Liolin writes, “I recently
took a job as head coach of the
Girls Racing Team and manager of business development at
Norwalk River Rowing Association
in Connecticut. Here’s a link of
interest: http://norwalkriverrowing.
org/2014/12/15/norwalk-river-
rowing-welcomes-evans-liolin-asgirls-head-coach/
I’d love to connect with Nobles
grads in the area. Also, if there
are former Nobles oarswomen
who would like to share their
expertise and experiences with
my new team, they are certainly welcome. Hope you’re all
doing well, and Go Nobles!”
1991
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Kelly Doherty Laferriere
kellylaferriere@icloud.com
1992
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Lynne Dumas Davis
703-623-4211
LynneDumas@aol.com
1993
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Sam Jackson
978-409-9444
sambjackson@hotmail.com
Carrie (O’Connor) Jamison’s
children, Hannah and Wilbur
1994
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Annie Stephenson Murphy
415-377-4466
annie_stephenson@yahoo.com
From class correspondent Annie
Murphy: “Happy New Year to all
of you! The year 2014 was a big
one for my family, especially my
daughter, Ava, who started kindergarten, learned to swim, learned
to ride a two-wheel bike, and
perfected the art of swinging from
the monkey bars. The calluses
those kids get! My son, Callum,
turned 2, and with that came a
love for speed on his scooter and
strider bike, construction sites and
emergency vehicles. It also meant
broken teeth and a broken arm. I
have a feeling there will be more
of that to come. The highlight of
my year was spending a month at
Lake Tahoe surrounded by nature,
friends and family. Seems like my
classmates are all off to a busy
start in 2015 and therefore too
busy to send updates!”
Carrie (O’Connor) Jamison
reports, “There is fresh snow on
the ground, and I am enjoying the
last day of winter vacation, doing
all my lesson plans and grading I
procrastinated doing. I started a
new job this fall, teaching math
at a private high school in Bangor,
Maine. In a lot of ways it reminds
me of life at Nobles: a strong
sense of community and all-school
assemblies that celebrate the
accomplishments of students and
staff. It’s a special place, and it
helps me to appreciate the experience I had a Nobles. Life outside of
work is very busy, with two young
energetic children: Hannah is 5
and in kindergarten, and Wilbur is
almost 1½. Happy New Year!”
Matt Glassman would love
to see some familiar faces in the
audience as he takes his show on
the road: “I am going to be on tour
with Double Edge a lot this spring
and would love for Nobles friends
to come see our performances.
We will be touring an original
piece called the ‘Grand Parade (of
the 20th Century)’ to Boston at
Arts Emerson’s Paramount Theater at the end of April, as well as
to New Orleans, Keene, N.H., and
to two cities in Norway in June. I
would love to share this work with
folks, and if anyone comes, please
contact me so we can connect.
Details are here: http://www.
doubleedgetheatre.org/the-grandparade.html.”
1995
any members of the Nobles community are in the area and have a
few minutes to stop by, it would
be great to see you.” Tara Shaw reports, “This past
summer, my family and I spent a
fun-filled week with Spencer Jacobs (Railsback) out in San Francisco. It was so much fun watching
our kids interact and play.”
Tess Doyle says, “We welcomed John Samuel Colbert on
Dec. 12, 2014. He’s been a peaceful and well-loved addition to the
family!”
Ben Thompson and his wife,
Courtney, are excited to announce
the birth of their son, Augustine
“Augie” Gordon Thompson on
April 28, 2014. Jon and Anh Rechner are excited to announce the
birth of their son, William Huynh
Rechner, on Aug. 21, 2014. Perhaps
Augie and William will be Nobles
Class of 2032? CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Kelly Flaman
kflaman@gmail.com
1997
1996
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Alex Slawsby
ads@alumni.brown.edu
Class correspondent Alex Slawsby
writes, “After seven years working for Innosight, an innovation
consulting firm in Lexington, I left
last summer to cofound my own
two-person consulting firm, Forg
(pronounced Forge), to help big
companies act like startups when
going after new opportunities or
defending against new threats.
I’m happy to say that we’re off the
ground and we’re located in the
Saxonville Mills in Framingham. If
Bobbi Oldfield Wegner
617-980-1412
bobbiwegner@gmail.com
Jessie Sandell Achterhof
781-990-3353
jessie.achterhof@gmail.com
Tim Mah shares, “In February
2014, I married my partner, James
Carter, at a wedding in Cape Town,
South Africa. We had quite a
few Nobles grads who made the
20-hour trip over to be with us.
We all had a great time together
during the week leading up to the
wedding. Jimmy and I are back in
NYC now, where we live. I continue
to work as a health development
graduate news
officer in the Foreign Service of the
U.S. Agency for International Development, and Jimmy is at Calvin
Klein/PVH.”
2002
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
William N. Duffey III
617-893-1040
williamduffey@gmail.com
1998
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Melissa Tansey
617-696-7516
melissa.tansey@gmail.com
Congratulations to Mike O’Donnell
and his wife, Ryan, who welcomed
daughter Maeve Elizabeth on Oct.
2, 2014.
Left: Edwin Johnson ’00 with wife
Susan and son Francisco at St.
Mary’s. Above: John DiCamillo ’02
with wife Sara and daughter Nora
1999
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Stephanie Trussell Driscoll
stephdriscoll32@gmail.com
Eliza (Drachman-Jones) ’01 and
Rich Quincy welcomed their
daughter, Louisa Anne Quincy, on
Dec. 8, 2014.
2000
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Lisa Marx
lisamarx@gmail.com
Cat Bui writes, “I live in Chicago
with my husband, Terry Li. Terry
is a dedicated and caring neurologist in Chicago. This spring I’m
excited to commute to the University of Texas at Austin to finish my
Ph.D. courses while working at
Astellas Scientific & Medical
Affairs, specializing in health
economics and clinical outcomes
research and oncology. I’m thrilled
to be a part of innovations that
provide treatment options for
people with cancer. We split our
time between Chicago and Boston,
visiting our families.”
Sasha Papernik wrote that
“2014 was a year of weddings!
Sarah Clabby, Emira Gjata and
I all got married this year within
four months of one another. Emira
was married to Michael Sproul
in a breathtaking outdoor setting
overlooking the ocean in Saint
Martin, French West Indies. Sarah
Clabby married Ryan Schroeder
in a glamorous ceremony on New
Year’s Eve at the Orpheum Theater
in Madison, Wis. I married Justin
Poindexter in a magical outdoor
ceremony by the New River in the
Blue Ridge Mountains in North
Carolina. Some of the greatest
musicians from New York City
and the Blue Ridge Mountains celebrated with Justin and me at the
musical jamboree that ensued.”
Edwin Johnson writes, “2015
is off to a great start for our family.
Our son, Francisco, has just turned
10 months and is growing more
awesome by the minute. I’m 1½
years into my call as the priest-in-
charge of St. Mary’s in Dorchester,
and we just moved to Roslindale,
close to Nobles! My wife, Susan,
and I are looking forward to the reunion; she’s heard a ton of stories
and is looking forward to meeting
the amazing people in my class.
Here’s a picture of the three of us
shortly after Francisco starred in
the pageant as baby Jesus!”
2001
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Lauren Kenney Murphy
Lauren.kenney1@gmail.com
Susannah Jackson Sullivan and
her husband, John, welcomed their
second baby boy, Tobey Jackson
Sullivan, on March 4, 2014.
Eliza (Drachman-Jones) ’01
and Rich Quincy ’99 welcomed
their daughter, Louisa Anne
Quincy, on Dec. 8, 2014.
Lisa (Griswold) Robbins
writes with exciting news: “My
husband and I are expecting a
baby girl in March!”
April Watson writes, “I’m still
in Massachusetts. A little over a
year ago, I took a financial analyst
position at Goodwin Procter, LLP,
and I’m currently getting my MBA
at Boston University. I hope I can
squeeze in some travel time this
year, as I had an awesome 2014
going to Vegas, the Dominican
Republic and other great places.”
Susannah Phillips Fogarty
reports, “On April 14, 2014, Robert
and I were thrilled to welcome
our son, John Lane Fogarty. Nine
months later, Jack is crawling all
over the place, drooling like crazy,
and keeping us on our (exhausted)
toes. Robert, Jack and I are still
living in D.C. with our dog, Penny,
and I have transitioned into a new
role establishing and growing the
content strategy discipline within
the AKQA D.C. office. 2014 was a
wonderful and busy year!”
John DiCamillo is still digging
some southern roots down in
Atlanta. He is back at Emory for his
MBA, while his wife, Sara, works as
a transplant PA next door at Emory
Hospital. They celebrated the first
birthday for their daughter, Nora,
and are gearing up for No. 2 due
this summer! If you’re in the area,
drop him a line.
Kellen Benjamin reports, “I’ve
started a new gig as the director
of national sales for IMG College,
selling integrating sponsorships
for the 80-plus universities and
colleges under the IMG College
umbrella. IMG College is a division
of IMG, which was acquired by
WME almost a year ago. WME–
IMG or bust!”
After graduating from Columbia
Business School in 2013, Julie Son
Lee moved to California to begin
work at Facebook. In 2014, Julie
married Michael Song Lee, a U.S.
Army veteran and McKinsey consultant. Caroline Sand ’01 and Diana Nevins attended the wedding.
Caitlin Spillane King and her
husband, Kevin King, welcomed
their first child, Charlotte Jane
King, on Dec. 12, 2014.
Margot (Lynn) Davis moved
from New York to Texas just over
a year ago with her husband, Zach
Davis. Both grew up in the northeast, so they’re surprised to be loving life in Houston, where Margot
works for Rice University. They
welcome visitors and reconnecting
with Nobles alumni who have also
relocated to Houston.
2004
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Carolyn Sheehan Wintner
781-801-3742
carolyn.sheehan@post.harvard.edu
2005
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Saul Gorman
617-447-3444
saul.gorman@gmail.com
Please refer to Memoriam section for
the obituary of Devin Nwanagu.
2006
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
E.B. Bartels
ebandersenbartels@gmail.com
E.B. Bartels ’06 writes, “First off,
Lydia Paine (of Wellesley, Mass.)
is excited to announce her upcoming nuptials to Henrik Hagtvedt (of
Sandefjord, Norway), on June 5,
2015. They will be getting married
in everyone’s favorite Greater
Boston town of Waltham (R.I.P.
The Skellig), and Lydia describes
the whole situation as ‘surreal.’ I
couldn’t agree more. How old are
we? Where has the time gone?!
Congratulations, Lydia! Second, Harry Aspinwall
writes us with a jolly good update
about his theatrical shenanigans
and generally fabulous life: ‘I’ve
been working on a bunch of film
projects this year, including a Web
series (part of which was shot at
the Fairbanks House in Dedham)
and a short historical comedy,
Scoundrel, which I wrote and directed with a budget of $10,000,
shot on Cape Cod. I’m also making
a deplorable Web series comedy
about two drunken adventurers in
a ridiculous fantasy land, which
is not online yet, and I wouldn’t
share here even if it were, because
it’s absolutely disgraceful. In other
recent adventures, in November I
was part of a documentary team
exploring the origins of money in
London, Turkey and Zurich (where
I got to hold—but sadly not keep—
a million dollars’ worth of gold),
and in December I participated in
the annual Boston Tea Party reenactment, to wild acclaim (by which
I mean boos and death threats—
par for the course playing a Tory
and a British admiral).’ Check out
Harry’s smiling face on the side of
a trash can at right.
Last, Janna Herman would like
to let everyone know that she has
increased her efforts in petting
strangers’ dogs from 90 percent to
93 percent.”
Noelle Cooper writes, “I married my best friend, David Hannah,
in June 2014. (Still working on the
name change!)”
2007
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Greg Keches
gkeches@gmail.com
2008
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Aditya Mukerjee
212-935-5637
aditya.mukerjee@gmail.com
2009
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Liz Rappaport
617-413-6070
lizrap@gwmail.gwu.edu
From class correspondent Liz Rappaport: “The Class of 2009 had
an amazing time at our five-year
reunion this past summer. Thank
you to everyone who was able
to make it, and for sharing all of
your fond memories of our time at
Nobles. This year, I had the honor
of attending Arianna Brown’s wedding to Jimmy Hendry, with Maddy
Petrini. Maddy was a beautiful
bridesmaid, and maid of honor
Ayla Brown ’06 sang ‘A Thousand
Years’ as Arianna walked down the
aisle with her dad, former Senator
Scott Brown. It was an incredible
time, and we are so thrilled for
Arianna and Jimmy!”
Suzanne Sullivan tells us, “I
am living on the eastern shore of
Maryland, working as an educator
and volunteer coordinator for an
environmental nonprofit. If folks
are in the D.C. area, let me know.”
Manny Perez notes, “Since my
last update, my job has shifted to
project lead/business development
advisor at tech startup StockUp
(formerly Blue Tiger Labs), working
on our latest product, StockUp
Savings. I’m still living in D.C. and
really enjoying my time here!”
Melina Chadbourne writes,
“I’m still pursuing acting in NYC.
I work a few odd flexible jobs and
Left: You can see the face of Harry Aspinwall ‘06 plastered around the city on
tourist trolleys, billboards and even trash cans. Pictured here with Harry’s face is
his half-sister, Lila, daughter of Mark Aspinwall ‘75. Right: Maddy Petrini and Liz
Rappaport, both ‘09, at the wedding of Arianna Brown ‘09
graduate news
still teach filmmaking on the side
to elementary school kids. My sister recently moved to the city for
an incredible job, so we are having
fun together. I have an amazing
boyfriend who is also involved in
film, and he’s been such a great addition to my world. He’s a blast.”
Derick Beresford writes, “On
Memorial Day weekend I got engaged! My fiancée, Tamar Charles,
and I had been dating for four and
a half years prior to me asking the
question. I performed the good deed
at Wesleyan University, and after
sweet-talking the ResLife department, I was able to get into her
dorm room, where we hung out all
the time. We walked back from our
favorite restaurant in Middletown
to the dorms. What’s usually a
five-minute walk felt like forever.
I’ve never been more nervous in my
life, and I felt like she could see my
heart beating. Once we got to the
room, I got down on one knee and
proposed. She went through the
full range of emotions: shock, tears,
smiles and all. It was reunion and
commencement weekend at Wesleyan, so we were able to celebrate
at a tent party with our friends. It
was such an amazing night and has
since been a great summer. My
parents threw us an engagement
party in Atlanta, and her family and
our friends are hosting another one
in NYC. We have been riding on the
high of the engagement and are now
really locking down the details for
the big day. We are planning to get
married next summer in New York.
As far as work, things are going
well. I’m approaching a year working for the New York Mets and SNY
(a regional sports network, similar
to NESN for those unfamiliar) in the
ad sales department. It was a long
baseball season where I learned
a lot and met a lot of people. The
biggest highlight was our sponsor
workout, where we got decked out
in a full Mets uniform and got to
play a game at Citi Field.”
2010
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Holly Foster
508-404-4616
hatherly.a.foster@dartmouth.edu
From class correspondent Holly
Foster: “Lots of great updates from
the Class of 2010! Can’t wait to
see you all at our reunion.”
Tori Goyette writes, “Hi, everyone! Saw a bunch of N’10 over
the holidays and was so excited to
catch up with some of the out-oftowners. Jackie Young is killing it
in Pittsburgh (speaking of ketching
up), Greg Corrado in Rochester
and Willy Bliss in the Big Easy. It
was bittersweet to wrap up the
holidays with ‘See you at reunion!’
Seems like a long way away, but as
friends and classmates continue to
scatter, it is exciting to have a day
on the calendar dedicated to getting everyone back together. Hope
you’re all happy and healthy!”
Ben Wiggins is working at
Synapse, an advertising company
in Stamford, Conn., as a financial
analyst.
Nate Ellis is living in South
Boston and enjoying working at
Shields and Company.
Caitlin Fai is living in Boston,
currently pursuing a Master of
Science in biomedical sciences
through Tufts University School of
Medicine. She writes, “Although
I am studying most of the time, I
have been able to see a bunch of
Nobles kids and am really excited
to see everyone at reunion!”
Nike John is graduating this
spring and hopefully starting her
own real estate brokerage group
in May.
Jackie Young is living in
Pittsburgh, working for Heinz, and
enjoying performing sketch and
improv comedy as well.
Will Potter graduated from
Middlebury and moved to San
Francisco in March.
Alexa Zilberfarb writes, “After
graduating from Scripps College
in May with a degree in geology,
I’ve moved back to the East Coast,
to Washington, D.C., to work
for an environmental consulting
company. Already looking forward
to our five-year reunion!”
Hannah Birnbaum is currently
working as a lab manager at MIT
Sloan. She writes, “I work in a social psychology/organization studies lab that researches the effect of
diversity on organizations.”
Colin Coughlin is working as an
analyst at a commercial real estate
firm in Boston. He writes, “I’m looking forward to getting back on campus and seeing everyone in May.”
Tommy Ragno is also pursuing
a career in commercial real estate
in Boston.
Jack Allard is working in
Newton as an analyst for a health
care company.
Gordie Bailey is working
at State Street in corporate compliance.
Maddie Leach recently moved
to New York and works as a
production assistant for Showtime
Networks.
After graduating from Penn,
Spencer Schlager now lives in New
York and works for a real estate
investment bank.
Chris Pratt is teaching math at
CATS Academy in Newton, Mass.
JJ Pollack is doing independent
filmmaking in Austin, Texas.
Laura Kirk writes, “I’ve been
working as an account coordinator
at O’Neill and Associates, which is
a full-service communications and
government-relations firm in Boston. It has been going well, but I’ve
decided to take a risk and move out
to San Francisco. I have no set plans
as of yet, but I’m sure (mostly sure,
ha ha) that things will fall into place.
I hope everyone is doing well!” Kerrin Smith is a bonafide
Brooklynite with the job of her
dreams, working at Catchafire in
business development. Outside of
work, she enjoys running, vintage
shopping, and working on her
NYC-based project, CATid. Watch
her TEDx talk at www.catid.net.
Curtis Rheingold is conducting
neuroscience research at McLean
Hospital before applying to graduate school in the fall.
Denna Laing writes, “Hey,
Nobles! After college graduation I moved home, and I am now
working at the District Attorney’s
office in Lynn. I am also playing
hockey for the Boston Blades. I had
so much fun skating in the Nobles
alumnae hockey game with Caitlin
Fai, Marissa Gedman and Sarah
Duncan in December. But I am
even more excited for our fifthyear reunion. I can’t wait to see
you all and catch up!”
Annelise Baker writes, “I am
currently in a professional production of West Side Story at Drury
Lane Theater near Chicago. I am
playing the role of Graziella. It’s a
lot of hard work, but I’m having a
great time!”
Caitie Meyer is working at
Deloitte Consulting as a business
technology analyst and is enjoying
living in Boston.
Eliza Goode is working in the
Membership Rewards program at
American Express. She writes, “I
am enjoying life in NYC and got a
nice long vacation at the end of the
year. I am looking forward to seeing
everyone at the reunion in May!”
Marty Morris is working in
NYC for Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center as a clinical research assistant. He writes, “I am
enrolled as a Post-Bacc student at
Columbia University with plans to
take the MCAT and apply to medical school this year!”
Darcy Banco is in her second
semester of the MD/MPH program at Tufts University School of
Medicine. She writes, “I absolutely
love the program and being back
in Boston.”
Lara Ameri is working in
Boston as a litigation paralegal for
Ropes & Gray and plans to attend
law school in the near future.
Daria Ameri is currently
working as a research coordinator at Tufts Dental School and will
attend the school as a student
beginning in July.
Dori Rahbar writes, “Hi, everyone. I graduated this past May
from Brown, where I studied political science and played four years
of squash alongside some different
journalism and radio adventures.
Now I’m in NYC, working as a
research analyst at a technology
think tank for Gartner. I’m still
playing squash here in the city
when I can. Most important, I also
had a growth spurt, so now I’m
6’3”, and I’ve taken up professional
basketball as a side hobby. No one
saw that coming.”
Dan Samost is currently living
in New York and working for Bronx,
a nonprofit where he serves as a
case manager for the Homebase
homelessness prevention program.
He plans on heading to graduate
school for psychology.
Willy Bliss is living in New
Orleans and working as a field engineer for the Conti Group, where
he has worked on a levee project
and discharge pipe installation.
Linda Paniszyn is in her first
year of medical school at Albany
Medical College. She is really enjoying her studies and being involved
in the community through services
mentoring kids and working with
Alzheimer patients, as well as being
her school’s American Medical Association president. She is also very
excited to be doing wedding planning as the maid-of-honor for her
sister Katie Paniszyn ’07, who is
marrying Ben Dawson ’07 in June.
2011
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Katie Puccio
508-446-0726
krpooch@gmail.com
enrolled in the CIEE Business and
Culture Program that provided both
the business classes I needed back
at Elon as well as some culture
courses that were a little more
engaging and taught us about life
and culture in Barcelona. With Barcelona being the largest metropolis
on the Mediterranean Sea, I was
able to travel across Europe with
little hassle. Along with a group of
my friends from Elon, I visited some
major European cities like Munich,
Amsterdam, Rome, Florence and
Budapest, as well as some smaller
and more relaxing locations like
Mallorca, Seville and the Canary
Islands. I was fortunate enough to
catch up with some friends from
Nobles while abroad, as there
were a number of students from
the Class of 2012 also in Europe,
which made for a great reunion
at Oktoberfest! A city of mixed
cultures and intertwined histories,
Barcelona was the perfect place to
spend three and a half months. Its
growth toward modernization while
maintaining its rich history through
art and architecture makes Barcelona one of the most unique cities
in the world, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to spend a
semester here. Between the friends
I met, the lessons I learned, and the
experiences I had, studying abroad
was one of the best decisions I have
made, and I recommend it to all!”
Lily Ham writes, “Hi, guys!
I spent last semester studying
abroad in Buenos Aires through a
CIEE program. I took classes at Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Católica Argentina, both
of which were great because the
classes were with local students in
Spanish. Zoey Carey and Marcelo
Domeniconi were also there on a
Middlebury program, and it was really fun to be able to catch up with
them. We lived with host families
while we were there and got to
travel all around Argentina and to
Chile and Uruguay. I was there for
five months, and the entire experience was amazing, but my favorite
part was a trip that Zoey and I
took to El Calafate in Argentinian
Patagonia. We hiked up to Mount
Fitz Roy and spent a day trekking
across the Perito Moreno Glacier.
Hope everyone is doing well!”
2012
CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Coco Woeltz
woeltz@bc.edu
Matt King writes, “This past
semester, I was fortunate enough
to study in Barcelona for three
and a half months. As a student
at Elon University, the majority of
undergraduates take the opportunity to study abroad, and it is one
decision I will never regret. I was
Lily Ham and Zoey Carey, both ’12, trekking in Patagonia
graduate news
memoriam
Harrison Prescott Eddy ’39
passed away at his home on Dec.
13, 2014, at the age of 93. Eddy
graduated with the class of 1939,
and was described as “one of the
most dependable members of
[the] class.” (Class-book, 1939) A
star on the football, track and baseball teams, he was best remembered as the great debater, “always
willing to express his opinion and
elucidate at length on any subject
in the classroom, in the Student
Council and around the school
grounds.” (Class-book, 1939) A
devoted boatsman, Eddy spent
one summer as captain of the
charter boat from which a record
600-pound tuna was caught for
the Black Dolphin Tuna Contest.
After graduating Williams College in 1941, he attended medical
school at Columbia Physicians &
Surgeons in New York and interned
in psychiatry at the Bedford Naval
Hospital. He practiced general
psychiatry in Manhattan, where
he enjoyed teaching psychiatric
principles to social workers and
medical residents at St. Vincent’s
and Roosevelt Hospitals, and in
Pleasant Valley, N.Y., until 1966,
when he moved to The Plains.
Eddy is survived by his wife of
68 years, Jane Lee (née Jackson);
his children, William, Catherine
and Susan; and his grandson,
Maxwell.
Reverend Seth W. Newton ’49
of Marstons Mills, Mass., died
Nov. 4, 2014, at the age of 84.
Newton spent two years at
Nobles, where he was captain of
the wrestling team. Although a
relative newcomer to his class,
Newton “left his mark so deep that
he seem[ed] not as a newcomer,
but rather one of the mainstays
of the class.” (Class-book, 1949)
In addition to wrestling, he
played on the JV soccer team
and rowed on the Charles; in his
senior year, he won the decathlon “with well over a thousand
points.” (Class-book, 1949).
He graduated from Yale
University in 1953 and then from
New College at the University
in Edinburgh, where he studied
theology. Graduating from Union
Theological Seminary in 1957 with
a Bachelor of Divinity, he was
ordained in the United Church
of Christ and served 50 years
in ministry. Newton brought his
experience and his warm, conversational manner to churches
all over Massachusetts and New
Hampshire, also serving many
years as the Resident Minister
at the Grace Memorial Chapel in
Menauhant, East Falmouth, where
he spent summers as a child.
Newton is survived by his wife
of 58 years, Helen Rosemary Patterson Newton; his five children,
Seth, Roger, Barbara, Andrew and
Tyler; his many nieces and nephews, eight grandchildren, and four
great-grandchildren.
Bruce Palmer ’50 of Signal Mountain, Tenn., passed away on Nov.
7, 2014. Palmer spent five years at
Nobles, where he was the editorin-chief of The Nobleman during
his senior year. According to his
classmates, he was “the class
authority on the Charleston” and
an avid dancer. (Class-book, 1950)
He participated in almost every
extracurricular Nobles had to offer:
He was a member of the football,
basketball and baseball teams; in
the glee club, dramatic club and
Deutsche Verein; he played in the
quartets and sang in the Nobleonians; and he won the Time prize
in 1948. (Class-book, 1950)
He graduated in 1954 from
Williams University with a B.A.,
and then from Brandeis, where he
earned his master’s degree. Palmer
previously lived in Stockton, N.J.,
where he taught English and Humanities for many years at private
and public schools and colleges in
the New Jersey area. He was also a
writer of more than 10 books,
including titles such as They Shall
Not Pass, about the Spanish Civil
War, Last Bull Run and Chancellorsville. As a lifelong writer, he also
wrote for local newspapers, including the Lambertville Beacon.
Palmer was preceded in death
by his wife of 50 years, Suzanne
Palmer. He is survived by his
children, Mark, Matthew and
Maria; his sister, Diane; and six
grandchildren.
John Mansell “Jack” Tucker ’53,
one of the most beloved, smart,
humorous and bright-shining stars
of the Nobles Class of 1953, sadly
passed away on Nov. 13, 2014. I
had the fortune of meeting Jack
when he first enrolled at Nobles
and instantly discovered a kindred
spirit, so that for the rest of our
many years of knowing each other,
we laughingly referred to each
other as “best buddies.”
To know Jack was to know a
truly exceptional human being and
gentleman, and as one classmate
remarked when he heard of Jack’s
demise, when you talked to Jack,
you would always pay close attention, because you knew that
you would learn something.
During his years at Nobles,
Jack was the captain of the soccer
team, played on the basketball
team, and sang with the glee club,
the quartets, the choir, and the
singing group the Nobleonians.
He was on the Nobleman Board
and was business manager of
the Classbook Committee.
Jack was born in Boston in
1936 to Frank and Dorothy Tucker.
He grew up there (loving Ted
Williams and the Red Sox) and
graduated from Williams College
in 1957. After working for several
years in Boston and Cincinnati,
Jack moved to Chattanooga in
1970, when he was hired by the
Professional Golf Company, which
later was renamed ProGroup. He
ran ProGroup, a Chattanoogabased golf-equipment manufacturer, until 1992. Those years
were the happiest days of his
professional career, and he always
appreciated the efforts of his many
coworkers who helped make the
company such a success during
that period. Jack was a businessman to his core. He was good at it,
and he enjoyed it tremendously.
Jack is survived by his wife
of 34 years, Sharon; his son, Jeff,
of Chattanooga, Tenn.; his
daughter, Lindsay Berry, and her
husband, Randy, of Atlanta; his
son, Andy, and his wife, Tara,
of Signal Mountain, Tenn., and
grandkids Haydon, Jack and Cate
Tucker, also of Signal Mountain;
his sister, Jane Palmer, of Lyme,
N.H.; his brother, Dick, and his
wife, Lisa, of Boston; his motherin-law, Betsy McCullough, his
brother- and sister-in-law, Terry
and Cindy Ziegler, of Chattanooga;
seven nephews and two nieces.
He is also survived by two of
the world’s most loved black labrador retrievers, Emmy and Faith.
To sum up his love of labs and the
way he spoiled them, a friend once
remarked, “If there’s such a thing
as reincarnation, I want to come
back as one of Jack Tucker’s dogs.”
Jack also loved working in the
woods at his house, walking the
beaches at Sanibel, Florida, playing
golf and tennis, reading, and especially the sport of horse racing,
while training his horses to hopefully become racetrack winners.
Jack, “best buddy,” as I reflect
on our years of friendship, I know
that you loved the beauty of horses, the excitement of the races and
the intense rush that you felt when
your horses ran a great race. In
your mind’s eye, you can see and
feel yourself in the Winners Circle,
with everyone cheering for the
wonderful race just run. All I can
say about your life is, Congratulations, Jack. You ran one hell of a
great, exciting and wonderful race.
Written by Winston “Hooley”
“Best Buddy” Perry ’52 & ’53 Class
Correspondent
William “Billy” Henry Allen ’53
of Chatham, Mass., passed away
on Nov. 6, 2014, at the Brigham &
Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Billy was the beloved husband
of the late Stephanie (Knights) Allen. He was born in Jobabo, Cuba,
on Sept. 11, 1934, and was the son
of the late William Lothrop and
Isabelle (De Los Santos) Allen. Bill
was educated at the Fenn School,
Nobles and Greenough School and
then Harvard University.
During his four years at Nobles,
Bill was an avid outdoorsman and
an outstanding athlete, playing
on the 1951 undefeated football
team and becoming known for his
pile-driving runs from the fullback
position, in addition to playing
hockey and baseball. Interestingly
enough, on the lighter side, Bill
was voted by his classmates as
“The Man with the Ladies,” and in
his senior year, he had the honor
of living in the Round Room with
four of his classmates, along with
the many memories that a unique
experience like that can entail.
While at Harvard, Bill also played
and excelled at football and hockey.
He worked for many years in sales
and advertising, and most recently
was the owner of A & K and Son
Inc., in Dedham, Mass., for 18 years
prior to his retirement.
Bill is survived by his five
children, Sylvia Hazard, of Milford,
Conn.; William Allen, of Hopkinton, Mass.; Barbara Faron, of
Medway, Mass.; Sarah Mello, of
Rumford, R.I.; and Robert Allen
’95 of Wrentham, Mass. He is also
survived by two sisters, Margaret
Sedgwick, of New York, N.Y.; and
Anisia Gifford, of Medfield, Mass.;
nine grandchildren and five great
grandchildren. A memorial service
was held on Jan. 3, 2015, at the St.
Paul’s Episcopal Church in Dedham, Mass. Billy was a mainstay
of the Class of 1953 and will be
missed by everyone who knew
him. Vaya con dios.
Thank you to Hooley Perry ’53 for
submitting this obituary.
Richard “Chip” Morse ’59 will be
dearly missed. He passed away
at his home in Falmouth (Woods
Hole), Mass., with family members
at his bedside after a battle with
cancer. He had heroically joined
his N’59 class at their 55th reunion
dinner at the Castle in the spring.
Chip grew up in Newton and
came to Nobles in the 4th class.
He was a good student and lettered in football and baseball,
and was captain of the basketball team. He went to Princeton
to study economics, and after
earning his B.A., he served as
an officer in the U.S. Navy.
Chip practiced law in the
Boston area for more than 35
years. He founded his own firm in
1993, specializing in startup tech
and life-sciences companies. He
chose to retire from active practice
about 10 years ago and devoted
volunteer energy to the ocean sciences, specifically oriented to his
beloved Buzzards Bay and his love
for sailing. He was asked to serve
as trustee of both the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution and the
Marine Biological Laboratory. Chip
also served on the Board of Trustees at Nobles from 1972–1978.
In the words of classmate Tedd
Mann ’59, “Chip Morse embodied
the Nobles ideals taught by Eliot
T. Putnam and his staff: loyalty,
service and achievement. Chip led
an honorable and purposeful life,
and we are proud of him.”
His wife of almost 50 years,
Susan, survives him, as well as
his brother, Ken Morse ’64, son
Richard S. Morse III ’85, daughter Laura Morse Shear, and four
grandchildren.
Thank you to John Gibson ’59 for
contributing to this obituary.
After cramming several lifetimes’
worth of adventure into 58
years, Ned Colt ’75 died peacefully on Feb. 10, 2015, in Boston,
surrounded by his family, in the
aftermath of a stroke he suffered on Naushon Island, Mass.
Born in Philadelphia on April
27, 1956, Ned grew up in Dedham,
Mass., where his love of adventure
and the outdoors showed itself
early, in his explorations of the mill
pond at the family house on Cape
Cod and his clandestine rides on
ice floes in local rivers. After graduating from Noble and Greenough
School, he attended Connecticut
College, where Ned carried out
his love of learning in the wider
world by spending a semester at
sea, a semester at the National
Theater Institute in New London,
and semesters off during which he
worked in Argentina, backpacked
through Latin America, and crewed
on charter boats in the Caribbean.
After graduating in 1980 with
a degree in theater, Ned worked
briefly as an actor in New York and
a carpenter in Boston. He found
his path in broadcast journalism,
a career to which he was drawn
graduate news
because of his love of travel, his
curiosity and his gift for establishing instant and long-lasting
bonds with people. He worked as
a news reporter and producer in
Duluth, Jacksonville and Raleigh
before landing at Channel 7
in his hometown of Boston.
But Ned’s curiosity was global.
In 1992, he became the first Fulbright Scholar posted to Albania,
where he codesigned and taught
a journalism curriculum at the
University of Tirana. Then he and
a friend started a freelance news
production company, through
which they spent four years covering the Balkan War to the BBC, the
CBC, NBC, NPR and the Christian
Science Monitor. This was the first
of many conflicts Ned would cover.
During the bulk of Ned’s career,
from 1996 to 2008, he worked as
a foreign correspondent for NBC
News, using the power of broadcast journalism to bring attention
to people suffering around the
world. Based in Beijing, Hong Kong
and London, he covered wars,
revolutions and natural disasters in
more than 25 countries, including
East Timor’s struggle for independence, the fall of Indonesian
president Suharto, the tsunami in
Sri Lanka and the earthquake in
Kashmir. He was also able to draw
on his interest in the environment
by reporting on efforts to preserve
orangutan habitats in Borneo and
panda habitats in China. Much of
his time was spent covering the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, often
under difficult or hazardous conditions. In 2004, while covering the
uprising in Fallujah, Ned and his
TV crew were kidnapped and held
for three days by Iraqi insurgents,
a situation in which Ned’s grace
under pressure served him and his
colleagues well.
In 2009, Ned left NBC and
became an adjunct professor of
journalism at Boston University.
Wanting to learn how to provide
more direct help to the people on
whom he had reported for so many
years, Ned went back to school,
earning a master’s degree in public
administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, from
which he graduated with honors.
He then worked as a communications officer for the International
Rescue Committee, based in Islamabad and Amman. At the time of
his death, Ned was based in Erbil,
Iraq, working for the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees,
trying to bring the world’s attention
to the humanitarian crisis caused
by the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
Though Ned spent much of his
career abroad, he always looked
forward to returning to the place
he considered his true home:
Naushon Island, off Cape Cod,
where he was able to spend time
with his beloved family and friends
and express his lifelong love of
the sea. There, he masterminded
the design and construction of a
shared vacation home, and used
his carpenter’s tools to help build it.
Whenever he visited, Ned was the
champion quahog digger, the most
avid snorkeler, the most persistent
lobsterman and the most dogged
bushwhacker. He was the guiding
force behind the annual work week
at the island’s arboretum, where he
and his friends pruned shrubs, cut
away catbriar, and planted saplings
before cooking good food, drinking
good beer, and laughing and talking
long into the night.
In 1997, Ned met his future
wife, Cathy Robinson, a
Canadian news producer and
writer who shared not only his
interest in humanitarian work but
also his love of travel and adventure—and increased his happiness
by a factor of a thousand. Ned
had to cancel their second date
because, as he explained, “I’ve got
to cover Mother Teresa’s funeral”
(a line, though perfectly true, that
could be used only once). He and
Cathy helped fund the college
tuition of a young Afghan man he
had met on assignment in Kabul.
During the 18 years Ned and Cathy
spent together, they scuba dived
the Great Barrier Reef, skied Val
d’Isère, and bungee-jumped in
New Zealand. They celebrated
Ned’s 50th birthday by swimming with great white sharks in
South Africa and Cathy’s 50th
by swimming with whale sharks
in the Philippines. Two weeks
before his death, Ned and Cathy
swam with manatees in Florida.
Ned was predeceased by
his father, Henry F. Colt Jr. He is
survived by his wife, Cathy; his
mother, Lisa, of Easthampton,
Mass.; his brother Harry and sister-in-law Sandy Bell Colt, of Belgrade, Maine; his brother George
and sister-in-law Anne Fadiman, of
Whately, Mass.; his brother Mark,
of Medway, Mass; his nephews,
Ian and Henry; his nieces, Maya
and Susannah; many much-loved
cousins; and numerous friends
from around the world. All of us
will remember Ned for, among
other things, his humility, his idealism, his mischievousness, his stubbornness, his devotion to friends
and family, his rich baritone voice,
his capacity to make even a walk to
the dock seem like an adventure,
his ability to make us laugh so
hard we couldn’t breathe and his
deep generosity: a quality apparent even during his final hours.
A celebration of Ned’s life
will be held in the spring.
Devin Adanma Nwanagu ’05
passed away on Dec. 14, 2014.
She was a beloved member of the
class of 2005 and was actively
involved in many different aspects
of the school, but Devin’s true
passion was the girls varsity soccer team. As a three-year starter,
she helped Nobles rack up two
ISL titles and one New England
Championship. She was an integral
member of those teams on the
defensive side, even though
she was an exceptional goal
scorer (which she would happily
explain without prompting).
Devin continued her soccer
career at Trinity, where she was a
four-year starter. In her first two
years, she was the team’s leading
scorer and liked to joke years later
that Nobles coach Steve Ginsberg
“never used me right! I would
have been in the Hall of Fame!”
She was a two-time All-NESCAC
midfielder, but, in typical Devin
fashion, moved to defense during
her junior year based on a team
need. While she sacrificed the
notoriety of being the team’s top
goal-scorer, her team recognized
this selfless act by electing her
captain during her senior year.
Most recently, she worked as
a member of the Nobles Development Office, focusing primarily
on the BeNoblesBold campaign
and the Annual Nobles Fund. A
fierce supporter of the school,
she constantly looked for other
areas to which she could lend her
skills. She was the driving force
behind the Graduates of Color
Committee and the annual Carey
Classic women’s soccer game;
these two important school efforts
will carry on because of her hard
work and determination in laying
the groundwork. She served on
the Young Graduates Committee
and the Hall of Fame Committee,
and was a member of the dorm
faculty this past year. Her passion
for Nobles and soccer made her
an important member of the
varsity girls soccer coaching staff,
winning two ISL and two New
England Championships during
her tenure. Outside of Nobles, she
coached youth soccer for NEFC
girls-under-15 and -13 teams.
Beyond her accomplishments,
Devin will be remembered for the
ways that she touched each of us
who had the privilege of knowing
her. Her passing has left a massive
void in the Nobles community, but
we are buoyed by the light that she
shone on us all and are inspired to
keep working on the things that
were important to her. As such, her
family, classmates and friends have
established the Devin Nwanagu
’05 Scholarship Fund, which will be
awarded with preference given to
female students of color, who, like
Devin, bring dedication, motivation
and sportsmanship to the Nobles
classrooms and playing fields.
Devin is survived by her
parents, Carol and Ernest Nwanagu; brother E. Amadi Nwanagu;
grandparents Evelyn N. Young and
Ernestine Nwanagu; aunts and
uncles Anne Young-Berkeley, Clinton I. Young Jr., Mary L. and Eric
Graves, Seth Nwanagu, David and
Carolyn Nwanagu, and Jonathan
and Johanna Nwanagu.
Front row: Heather Partridge Kolva ’88, Paul Avery (former faculty), Peter Partridge ’54, Heather Markey Zink ’86, Wendy
Wheeler MacDonald ’85, Rin Carroll Jackson ’86, Bill Heald ’86, Andrew Partridge ’86 and Haley Partridge. Back row: Dick
Reiber ’60, Andrew McCabe ’86, Tim Partridge ’90, Zan Partridge ’93. Present at the wedding but missing from the photo:
Tripp Woodland ’92 and Kate Ramsdell (current faculty)
Left to right: Scott VanBroekhoven ’97, Kristina Vanstrom, Ignacio Morillas, Sandra Seru ’97, James Carter, Timothy Mah ’97,
Serena Mah ’94, Phil Seel, Priya Garg, Scott Lee ’97, Kim Ching ’97 and Joe Blois at the wedding of Tim and James.
announcements
Engagements
Marriages
Lydia Paine ’06 to Henrik Hagtvedt on June 5,
2015. The wedding will take place in Waltham,
Mass.
Katie Paniszyn and Ben Dawson, both ’07,
will be married in June.
Derick Beresford ’09 is engaged to Tamar Charles.
Andrew Partridge ’86 wed Haley Messenger in
Cataumet in October 2014.
Former faculty member Brian Jones married
his partner of 25 years, Michael Rocha, in Nahant.
Tim Mah ’97 married James Carter in Cape Town,
South Africa, in February 2014.
graduate news
From left to right: Caroline, Nick, Joe and Liza Beaulac ’86; Brian Jones (former faculty)
and Michael Rocha; and Declan, Kiera and Nat Jones
Jack Son, Ohk Son, Julie Son Lee ‘02, Michael Lee, Tracey Lee,
and Jung Lee
Sasha Papernik ’00 married Justin Poindexter in
North Carolina.
Anna Cooper ’02, David Hannah and Noelle Cooper
’06 at Noelle and David’s wedding in Santorini, Greece
Sasha Papernik ’00 married Justin Poindexter
in a magical outdoor ceremony by the
New River in the Blue Ridge Mountains in
North Carolina.
Sarah Clabby ’00 married Ryan Schroeder
on New Year’s Eve at the Orpheum Theater
in Madison, Wis.
Emira Gjata ’00 wed Michael Sproul in
Saint Martin, French West Indies.
Julie Son ’02 married Michael Song Lee
in 2014.
Noelle Cooper ’06 wed David Hannah in
Santorini, Greece, in June 2014.
Arianna Brown ’09 married Jimmy Hendry
Arianna Brown Hendry ’09 on her wedding day
in 2014 at Flag Hill Winery in Lee, N.H.
New Arrivals
Congratulations to Tess Doyle ’96 on the arrival
of son John Samuel Colbert on Dec. 12, 2014.
Mike O’Donnell ’98 and wife Ryan welcomed
John Samuel Colbert, son of Tess Doyle ’96
Louisa Anne Quincy, daughter of Eliza (DrachmanJones) ’01 and Rich Quincy ’99
Maeve Elizabeth O’Donnell, daughter of Mike
O’Donnell ’98 and wife Ryan
Tobey Jackson Sullivan, son of Susannah Jackson Sullivan ’01, with big brother Emmett
Susannah Phillips Fogarty ’02 with smiley son John
Lane Fogarty, born April 14, 2014
Caitlin Spillane King ’02 and her husband, Kevin King,
welcomed their first child, Charlotte Jane King, on
Dec. 12, 2014.
daughter Maeve Elizabeth on Oct. 2, 2014.
Susannah Jackson Sullivan ’01 and her husband, John, welcomed their second baby boy,
Tobey Jackson Sullivan, on March 4, 2014.
Eliza (Drachman-Jones) ’01 and Rich Quincy
’99 welcomed their daughter, Louisa Anne
Quincy, on Dec. 8, 2014.
Ben Thompson ’96 and his wife, Courtney,
announced the birth of their son, Augustine
“Augie” Gordon Thompson on April 28, 2014.
Jon Rechner ’96 and his wife, Anh, are excited
to announce the birth of their son, William
Huynh Rechner, on Aug. 21, 2014.
Susannah Phillips Fogarty ’02 and husband
Robert were thrilled to welcome son John Lane
Fogarty on April 14, 2014.
Caitlin Spillane King ’02 and her husband,
Kevin King, welcomed their first child, Charlotte
Jane King, on Dec. 12, 2014.
archive
DOWNTIME IN LYMAN LIBRARY
Senior boys show their silly side in this 1968 photo.
When you make a gift to the Annual Nobles Fund,
you give the gift of creativity and collaboration.
Make your gift to the Annual Nobles Fund today.
Visit www.nobles.edu/giveonline or contact
Director of Annual Giving Casey Hassenstein at
Casey_Hassenstein@nobles.edu or 781-320-7011.
Noble and Greenough School
10 Campus Drive
Dedham, MA 02026-4099
Angkor Thom, Cambodia
On their first day of biking more than 180 miles through
Cambodia and Vietnam, the spring break cycling and
service group of eight students and three chaperones
visited Bayon Temple, north of Siem Reap, Cambodia.
NON-PROFIT
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
BOSTON MA
PERMIT NO. 53825

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