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6  KQED Is Executing a Pivot “KQED’s challenge is to extend our digital capacity while

we sustain the radio and TV business,” says Anne Avis ’77.

10 Discovery: A Personal Model, a Business Model Ashley Fouts ’94 is facilitating the myriad decisions

necessary to turn breakthrough science at the bench

into life-changing drugs for patients.

14 Recraft a Company to Create a Lifestyle Brand David Pun ’99 embraces the challenges of running

a lifestyle fashion brand in the hyper-competitive

retail market.

18 Headed for Mars, On Schedule Confident about human capability, Ryan Sebastian ’06

and Harry O’Hanley ’06 are on the SpaceX team, working

to design and execute breakthrough aeronautics.

19 SpaceX on a Need-to-Know Basis

23 The Power of a Posse Lamont Gordon ’87 is helping transform students’ lives

and colleges’ expectations.

26 Mentors: Honest Talk About Teaching Bringing the tool of observation to a professional level

fuels growth for Milton mentors as well as new faculty.

30 Engineering Solutions for a Species in Peril Grade 3 students take a role in reviving the Monarch

butterfly population.

Milton Magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy, where change-of-address notifications should be sent.

As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school-administered activities.

Printed on recycled paper.

Features Departments

t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s

4 Across the Quad

34 Sports Hall of Famer Coach Mac Reaches 200 Career Wins by Liz Matson

38 Faculty Perspective Comeback by Jim Connolly

40 In Sight Beatnik Photograph by Michael Dwyer

42 On Centre

48 Head of School “Leave Room to Be Surprised” by Todd B. Bland

49 Messages

52 Alumni Authors

55 Class Notes

60 Post Script A Kinder, Gentler Place: An Appeal to My Contemporaries by Martha Rose Shulman ’68

EditorCathleen Everett

Associate EditorsErin BergLiz Matson

DesignStoltze Design

PhotographyLaura Barkowski ’15Erin BergMartin BermanMichael Dwyer Evisu Ferm Living Genentech John Gillooly Sheila Griffin

Akintola Hanif Liz MatsonGlenn Matsumura Jane McGuinnessThe Posse Foundation David Rabkin SpaceX Susan Wheelwright Greg White

2 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

3s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

Turnaround.How does a shift in direction begin? What kind of insight galvanizes

action and produces unforeseen progress or unprecedented growth?

After the fact, we note when a turnaround has happened. A business

rebounds; a nonprofit makes inroads on meeting a need; a team builds

victories after a stretch of defeats; an idea burgeons into an enterprise.

In this Milton Magazine, we talk with alumni and faculty whose work

and sense of purpose enables them and others to find strategies and

opportunities that change our terrain.

4 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

Faculty Facts: The Lives They Lead

a c r o s s t h e q u a d

Teacher: a person or thing that teaches something; especially: a person whose job is to teach students about certain subjects (Merriam-Webster)Does that include being house heads, class deans, coaches, advisors, coordinators and sponsors? Does it include weekend dorm duty, driving students to the airport or community service, directing plays, choreographing dance concerts, running music rehearsals, leading hikes, or chaperoning dances?

College “Recs” Faculty each write, on average, six to twelve college

recommendations per year. Department heads and

faculty who teach mostly juniors and seniors get the

most requests.

English and history faculty member Elaine Apthorp

once wrote a record 26 recommendations in one year.

Advising students on matters big and smallAt five to six students per year, senior faculty have guided many advisees over the years.

don dregalla

Music:

180mary jo ramos

Modern Languages:

110

dar anastas

Performing Arts:

238laurel starks

History:

189

vivian wu wong

History:

90 tarim chung

English:

84terri herr neckar

Math:

75

A b O v E Do you recognize this mustachioed man? Bob Sinicrope began in the math department in 1973. For 40 years he has led Milton’s jazz program. He recently became president of the Jazz Education network. His inaugural JEn conference hosted 3,500 jazz educators and Herbie Hancock as the keynote.

“It’s a major matter for each student’s application, so I

devote a lot of time and thought to preparing each one.”

— ElainE apthorp

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Did you know?Math faculty members climb 73 steps in Ware Hall to their classrooms an average of five times a day.

Athletics and physical education faculty each spend roughly 500 hours per school year on the fields/courts/rink/training rooms at Milton and another 30 to 40 hours on team buses.

The science department orders about 20,000 pairs of gloves for the labs each year.

Paul Menneg, visual arts faculty, orders three to four tons of clay per year.

Middle School robotics students use 9,600 LEGO pieces every year.

The performing arts department stages eight major productions each year.

Just athletics:They outfit and equip 85 teams (57 Upper School; 28 Middle School) for three athletic seasons.

Average purchases each year include:

24 footballs 80 soccer balls12 volleyballs60 field hockey balls14 dozen squash balls300 hockey pucks36 basketballs108 dozen tennis balls24 dozen baseballs40 dozen lacrosse balls144 Gatorade bottles 120 towels750 pounds of laundry detergent

A year of reviewing papers, quizzes, exams, and labs — just a sample:

English

Maria gerrity: 720 papers

Caroline sabin: 800 papers

tarim Chung: 420 essays

sCiEnCE

heather Zimmer: 4,500 lab pages

Matt Bingham: 166 tests, 35 mid-terms, 65 major labs, and 170 mini-labs

sarah richards: 192 tests, 72 major labs, and 216 mini-labs

Math

susan Karp: 600 quizzes/exams

heather sugrue: 900 quizzes/exams

ModErn languagEs

severine Carpenter: 1,800 quizzes/exams

Mark Connolly: 750 to 1,000 quizzes

isabelle lantieri: “A lot!”

pErforMing arts

susan Marianelli listens to 2,000 speeches each year

history

laurel starks: 416 papers/exams

Josh Emmot: 384 papers, 39 exams

K–8

sachiyo unger, grade 2: 1,800 quizzes/tests/projects

sandy Butler, K–5 art: Hundreds of projects, “from painting parrots with kindergarteners to group Lewis and Clark murals with third graders, to Egyptian masks with fourth graders, to helping fifth graders with their self-designed social justice artwork.”

The secret lives of facultyMark Connolly is training for a 134-mile bike ride in

June. Jennifer hughes performs in community theater

productions. Josh Emmott is an avid fly fisherman.

Matt Bingham can juggle. hal pratt is a cabinet maker.

louise Mundinger collaborates with other composers

to create new works for the pipe organ. Elaine apthorp

plays acoustic guitar, five-string banjo and a “sweet

little ukulele named Amy.” hannah pulit just became

a certified yoga instructor. Matt simonson was a

competitive figure skater. susan Karp paints still life.

tarim Chung is an avid cyclist and triathlete in the

summer. ted Whalen served as a non-ordained minister.

don dregalla has a keen interest in the Civil War.

linnea Engstrom loves to Zumba. gary shrager used

to play ultimate Frisbee. sachiyo unger is a long-term

practitioner of Baptiste yoga. dar anastas designed seven

floors of lighting in the Prudential Tower. ryan stone spent a year in China as the head coach of the Chinese

Women’s National Hockey Team. Matt petherick has run

six marathons. heather sugrue speaks French.

6

c a s e o n e A N N E A v I S ’ 7 7

6 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      kqed.org     facebook.com/KQED    @KQED

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KQED Is Executing a Pivot Anne Avis ’77

“We need all of that news,” Anne says, “to make real and

important decisions about the people and issues that

affect our lives. That’s why public media is so important

to democracy.”

Anne recently completed eight years as a board member

at KQED and six years on the NPR Foundation board.

“What’s surprising is that our business model — with a

diverse revenue mix that includes membership dues — is

a model that other news organizations are testing right now.

Ours evolved organically; it has worked and is still working.

We have a value proposition and a financial model that

is enviable. It’s so hard to build a news organization from

scratch. Many are trying to do it, so the responsibility to

adapt and thrive is strong.”

The demise of television and radio that was widely

predicted early in the digital revolution has not come

to pass. People are still watching TV and listening to radio,

and at the same time, online, mobile and social media

activity is growing rapidly. “So our challenge,” Anne says,

“is to extend our digital capacity while we sustain the

radio and TV business. Our digital technology has to be

just as robust as our radio and TV infrastructure.”

“Part of the value and the beauty of the public media system,” Anne Avis says, “is that

it reaches 99 percent of the country through this network of independently run local

stations.” Not only in hip, urban centers but in remote, rural areas, NPR stations air

news that is intensely local, as well as regional, national and global.

Rewarding interactive experiences, and the chance to

be part of a vibrant social community, have to happen

alongside excellent content.

All media are scrambling to address the reality that

audiences use multiple platforms, at once, to find what

they want. KQED is uniquely “well-positioned” in this

environment, Anne believes, “to successfully accomplish

the transformation that’s under way.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, KQED is public TV,

radio and online media serving nine counties in Northern

California. KQED is explicitly intent on fulfilling a

leadership role in the nation.

Location is one reason for Anne’s confidence that the

station will succeed. Not only is KQED the single dual

licensee in the Bay Area (TV and radio), but Northern

California is also the most receptive and supportive region

in the country for public broadcasting. Those engaged

KQED fans are in their cars as well. “Everyone is looking

to us to see how we execute this transformation,” Anne

says, “because we can be the model. This awareness helps

us push to be better. We’re testing and experimenting

with strategies that can be replicated.”

7S P r I N g 2 0 1 5

8 m i lt o n m a g a z i n e      kqed.org     facebook.com/KQeD    @KQeD

KQED’s president is Anne’s other key reason for

confidence. Anne served on the search committee that

resulted in John Boland’s appointment in 2010. As he

assumed his role, John Boland said that his big dream

“was that this institution becomes the 21st-century model

for what public service media can be.”

KQED may recently have been seen primarily as a

San Francisco–oriented institution, but during Anne’s

eight years on the board, the station has earned regional

relevance, and has engaged San Jose and Silicon Valley

leaders. Strengthening these connections has been a

priority for KQED and for Anne as board chair. Some of

the region’s experts in digital media, marketing and

education are now invested in helping to realize the front-line

vision for KQED. Wendy Schmidt, a philanthropist focused

on climate change issues, and her husband Eric, former

Google CEO, for example, are now KQED “underwriters.”

After a two-year transition to a custom Salesforce

database, KQED can better define its audiences. “We’re

beginning to learn things about who’s engaging, what

our value is for them, and who might join that audience,”

says Anne. “Then we filter what we’ve learned from listening

to them through the lens of our mission — improving

people’s lives.” Creating new apps, blogs, e-newsletter feeds,

curated content for streaming in Bluetooth-equipped

cars — moves like these, according to the most recent Pew

Research report on media, seem to be building audience

in the public domain, while listening to radio or watching

TV has leveled off. KQED’s most popular blogs are Bay

Area Bites, the food blog, and MindShift, a blog about trends

in the future of education.

Quite a few public media stations have a “chief content

officer” now. John Boland created the position first, at

KQED and then at PBS, assigning top-level responsibility

for integrating content across all the station’s channels

and platforms. That focus and function recognizes today’s

audience expectations.

A stream of innovations, along with updated fund-raising

techniques, demonstrate KQED’s commitment to nimble,

expert marketing, a critical element of the 21st-century

public media model, in Anne’s opinion. “We focus on how

we can more directly target and engage people who might

be inclined to public media,” says Anne. John Boland also

“Everyone is looking to us to see how we execute this transformation, because

we can be the model. This awareness helps us push to be better. We’re testing

and experimenting with strategies that can be replicated.”

9s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

believes in the power of partnering, as a structural and

marketing option that could breathe new awareness

and vitality into the public media “product.” He’s referring

not only to the well-respected cultural and educational

institutions in the area, like Stanford University or the

de Young Museum. He’s talking about unconventional

partners, like the San Jose Mercury News. KQED’s newsroom

is strong. Can KQED fill the news gap, especially in

local and regional news, when fewer reporters from other

organizations are out there in the field? As a nonprofit,

KQED doesn’t threaten corporate news organizations, and

joining strengths might help create a more valuable service

and product. Boland is focusing the station on imaginatively

looking at what’s working in the marketplace and where

the audience is going — rather than hunkering down in the

silos and conventions of the public broadcasting past.

Of course the resource question looms large for KQED

as it does for every public media outlet. Working with

the board’s nominating committee, Anne has focused on

finding and recruiting skilled, committed people to KQED’s

board. Careful to emphasize the board’s governance role,

and distinguish that from management, Anne knows that

talent on the board can facilitate KQED’s strategic direction.

She has been working with John Boland to develop

KQED’s capital campaign and identify the philanthropy

that will address the resource question. Unpretentious,

earnest and compelling, Anne easily shares her mastery

of how each element of the public media financial and

programming infrastructure works in a complicated and

delicate equilibrium.

An ambassador for the station’s aspirations, Anne

outlines the campaign building blocks: expanding KQED’s

technology infrastructure; growing the capacity to create

new programs, especially in the news, arts, sciences and

Bay Area life; and expanding KQED’s footprint in tech-

nology education, at a time when the need to cultivate skills

at the intersection of teaching and technology is great. The

prospect of reaching these goals will really speak to some

donors, Anne knows, and will simply not resonate with

others. She serves as an unflagging, honest communicator

with those who might be capable of helping KQED make

strides on its key priorities.

“I’ve learned so much from doing this work,” Anne says.

“I had so much to learn, I needed advice and counsel. I

asked, I got it, I learned, and I keep learning. I like being

part of a mission-driven and educational institution at a

time of amazing change.

“I believe in the power of the best information and

storytelling to motivate and bring out the best in people. The

medium for the storytelling might change, but people are

hungry for the information, and they’ll find it. I hope there

will always be a demand for those institutions that create

quality news and the chance to learn more about your world.

They are powerful forces for good.”

by Cathleen Everett

10 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

11S P R I N G 2 0 1 5

Discovery: A Personal Model, a Business Model

Genentech’s business is discovery. Genentech wants to

be “the leading biotechnology company, using human

genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and

commercialize medicines to treat people with serious or

life-threatening medical conditions.”

For example, Ashley points to Genentech’s drug

Herceptin, a treatment for metastatic breast cancer, as “the

fi rst personalized medicine.” Drugs like Herceptin are

now commonly called targeted therapies; they can be

eff ective if and when a person’s breast cancer cells have a

certain genetic composition. Today, genetic testing of

a patient’s cancer cells drives certain decisions about what

treatment regimens may be most eff ective. Herceptin helped

lead that pivotal shift in responding to certain diagnoses.

A competitive cyclist and hard-core skier whose early

post-college years played out in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,

Ashley would not have predicted her work world today. Still,

as she points out, some of her earliest memories of childhood

do seem predictive, at least in hindsight.

One of her earliest and happiest memories was of getting

lost on her bike with two neighbors. Prowling around in

unknown terrain had a certain high tension to it. With

no one looking for them or at them, they were free and

mobile on their wheels; they discovered a dead mouse

in an alley. “What wasn’t to love about that adventure?”

Ashley summarizes. “We had freedom, and we discovered

something we could examine right up close, with sticks

and tools at hand.”

Ashley, who loved math, ran into a crisis when she moved

from Denver, Colorado, to Franconia, New Hampshire.

For two full years, the Franconia schools did not introduce

her to any math she hadn’t already learned in Denver.

That deprivation only fed an aggressive appetite, and when

she got to Milton, Ashley “dove into the deep end.” She

devoured math and science regardless of whether she was

formally “ready” for the levels she chose.

At Penn, she took advantage of many diff erent science

programs, all over the world, like a semester of marine

biology in Australia. She majored in ecology and

environmental science, “but that didn’t feel right as a

career,” she says. So she put off fi nding a career and joined

the many highly educated skiers living and working in

A B O V EMolecule Building Set, photo courtesy Ferm Living.

Last December, Ashley Fouts moved away from a lab bench. That is, away from her

own lab bench. At Genentech, she began a new job keeping track of a molecule

and the teams working on it. As a project manager, she facilitates the myriad decisions

that are necessary to turn breakthrough science at the bench into life-changing

drugs for patients.

Ashley Fouts ’94

c a s e t w o A S H L E Y F O U T S ’ 9 4

a Business Model

Genentech’s business is discovery. Genentech wants to

be “the leading biotechnology company, using human

genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and

commercialize medicines to treat people with serious or

Last December, Ashley Fouts moved away from a lab bench. That is, away from her

own lab bench. At Genentech, she began a new job keeping track of a molecule

and the teams working on it. As a project manager, she facilitates the myriad decisions

that are necessary to turn breakthrough science at the bench into life-changing

drugs for patients.

Ashley Fouts ’94

A Personal Model, a Business Model

Last December, Ashley Fouts moved away from a lab bench. That is, away from her

own lab bench. At Genentech, she began a new job keeping track of a molecule

and the teams working on it. As a project manager, she facilitates the myriad decisions

a Business ModelA Personal Model, a Business Model

12 M I LT O N M A G A Z I N E � � �gene.com��� �facebook.com/Genentech�� �@genentech

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her timing was fortuitous.

The CEO of a biotech fi rm located in La Jolla, California,

bought a Jackson Hole company and hired local people

to work in his lab, sequencing DNA. “Five of us worked

from 3 p.m. until midnight, after skiing all day,” Ashley

says. “This is where I learned the basics of molecular

biology.” This is also where she discovered how much she

loved working at the lab bench. “The physicality of it,

building something with my hands, literally running from

the centrifuge to the bench — ‘I really like this,’ I thought.”

When two Ph.D. friends left the lab for research at Emory,

Ashley decided to explore graduate programs herself. She

began at Stanford in the biology department but the search

for research that met her own defi nition of excitement led

to Stanford’s microbiology and immunology department.

“Microbiology is actually comparable to ecology, in that

it’s about a pathogen and a host, and all those interactions,

at a molecular level.”

“You’re in the deep end,” Ashley comments about

research leading to a Ph.D. “The intense problem solving,

continually motivating yourself to ‘build and scale brick

walls’; then fi guring out what the next ‘wall’ should be,

building it yourself, and getting over that one as well was

rigorous. You develop problem-solving skills, and more

than anything, a core of self-motivation.”

“My advisor was fantastic,” Ashley says. “His methodol-

ogy and focus were similar to Dr. Eyster’s at Milton,” Ashley

remarks. “He taught me to ask the questions that would

disprove my hypothesis, and ask them as soon as

possible. Ask them fi rst, if you can. Researchers tend to

ask questions that would prove, rather than disprove, a

hypothesis, because doing the opposite is hard. Sometimes,

in the end, people catch what’s missing, but not always.

There’s a reason why so much of the scientifi c literature

that is published today just doesn’t hold up.”

“A really good scientist develops,” Ashley says. “It’s like

cooking: you have this intuition about what you can and

can’t do, but it’s building on experience that really matters

and enables your skills to grow.”

Having earned her Ph.D., developed a body of work

“that held up,” as Ashley describes it, and worked on

a post-doc project, Ashley moved from academia to join

Genentech’s new program in infectious diseases. She

worked on CMV (cytomegalovirus), a common human

virus that typically does not become symptomatic.

However, if a woman becomes infected with the virus for

the fi rst time during pregnancy, the virus passes to the

fetus. Babies infected in utero can be severely compromised,

developing symptoms that include hearing loss and

mental retardation. The virus is also very dangerous for

immunosuppressed individuals.

“Developing a drug to treat CMV in pregnant women

seemed both noble and important,” Ashley thought, and

trying to achieve that was consistent with Genentech’s

“The physicality of it, building something with my hands, literally running from the centrifuge to the

bench — ‘I really like this,’ I thought.”

13s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

mission. Ashley was using her training to address basic

research questions like, “How does the virus enter a cell?”

But what differentiated her work at Genentech from that

at Stanford were the other questions that occupied so much

of her time. Who are the patients we want to treat? What

type of drug might be safest for them? Could such a drug

work on CMV? What would a clinical trial look like to

test whether it works?

In the end, the decision on Ashley’s molecule was a

“no go.” The clinical path involved too many hurdles; the

sum of the barriers put the project out of reach. But the

rigorous review that led to that negative finding had an

alluring appeal: “I got to see all these fun decisions,” Ashley

says, “a strategic side of the process, wholly dependent

on the science of course, but at a higher level.” It led her to

take on an intense new internship at Genentech, testing

her aptitude and inclination to help lead at the crucial

intersection of science and strategy.

As a result, the whirling set of “as-yet-unknowns” that

orbit around the development of any drug are now Ashley’s

home base. Her deep, tested knowledge of science is vital,

and her role is to help teams work together to craft the bigger

picture beyond individual perspectives.

She is a project manager, one of roughly 50 people in a

field of 1,200 researchers; she is part of the Portfolio

Management and Operations (PMO) group at Genentech.

Project managers help “pull everything together,” as

Ashley says, on the 30 molecules currently under

development at Genentech. “Each molecule has its own

devoted teams: pharmacology, clinical, biomarker,

core, and technical development (manufacturing). Project

managers tend to work on more than one molecule,

thus gaining exposure in diverse disease areas.

“I’ll be helping the teams make the best decisions on

their molecule, bringing experts from all different

functions together and holding team members accountable

for their contributions.”

“Once again, I acted opportunistically and followed a

passionate interest,” Ashley muses, having now taken on

the work of discovery both literally and metaphorically.

“Sometimes I ask myself, ‘How does this make sense,’

having left the physical lab bench where I was so thrilled

to be?”

“Well, I’m exploring a different sort of ecology,” she

says, naming a concept that wraps the present and the

past tidily. “You can compare a company to an organism,

and in my new role I smooth the interactions between

the distinct parts of the company.” The best memory of

a 7-year-old lost on her bike may go one better to explain

where Ashley is now: the thrill of being lost, the rigor

of real evidence, the power of shifting perceptions, the

diligent pursuit of a new path.

by Cathleen Everett

A b O v EDnA on parade. Photo © Genentech, via flickr.com.

15s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

c a s e t h r e e

Six years ago, David was working for a private equity firm

and Evisu was one of the portfolio companies. According

to David, Evisu was “grossly mismanaged and the brand

had lost its identity.” David saw promise in the company

and tried to convince his firm’s founders to keep investing,

but they wanted to sell.

“Even though the company was on the verge of bank-

ruptcy, I felt confident that my plan could turn the company

around. So I organized a management buyout. I mortgaged

my mom’s house and used all my savings. I basically put all

my eggs in one basket and everyone thought I was crazy,

but these opportunities are rare.”

The Evisu brand, named after the Japanese god of

prosperity, was founded in 1991 in Japan. At the time, Levi’s

was selling their original shuttle loom machines, which they

no longer considered efficient. Evisu bought the looms and

became part of the vintage heritage denim movement that

took off in the ’90s. The brand expanded quickly and globally,

but it began to flounder in the 2000s. One of the first deci-

sions David made when he took over was to exit the U.S. and

European markets and retrench the business back to Asia.

“We thought there was a huge opportunity in the

China markets, where our consumers really embrace the

brand. I felt it was the right way to reposition the company

for growth. At the time, it was a one-step backward,

two-step forward strategy. We wanted to figure out what the

brand stands for and what we are trying to communicate

to consumers.”

Within one year of David’s leadership, Evisu went from

five years of red ink to operating in the black, cutting

expenses from $12 million annually to $4 million. Instead of

offering 1,000 different products per seasonal collection,

David’s team cut down to 400. Today, Evisu has 120 stand-

alone stores in Asia. They are mainly concentrated in

China, including a five-story concept store in Hong Kong

filled with art and a mixology bar.

“Selling the lifestyle of the brand, instead of just focusing

on ‘please buy us,’ is important,” says David. “A consumer

who wears Evisu appreciates art, challenges the status quo,

and wants to self-express in a unique way. Our customers

appreciate the more irreverent and humorous elements of

the brand.”

Everyone has a favorite pair of jeans. Whether it’s a worn pair that has seen better

days or a designer pair that fits just right, jeans are a personal wardrobe staple.

David Pun’s jeans are works of art. He is the enthusiastic chairman and CEO of Evisu,

a Japanese lifestyle fashion brand best known for producing jeans with high-quality

craftsmanship, vintage buttons and hand-painted details.

D A v I D P u N ’ 9 9

David Pun ’99

All imagery courtesy Evisu.

recraft a Company to Create a lifestyle brand

16 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      evisu.com     facebook.com/evisu    @evisu1991

There were certainly missteps along the road. David was

initially very cost conscious, he explains, and didn’t hire

a full team. Now he feels that slowed the turnaround.

Because he doesn’t have a fashion background, he believed

that hiring international design talent would be more

effective; over time he learned that design talent in Asia is

strong. And his initial China business partner was not

the best choice, but financial pressure led him to rush into

certain deals that in hindsight he would have managed

differently. Now that the business is stabilized and it’s a

“reasonably strong” franchise, David’s next move is figuring

out how to reenter the U.S. market.

“What I like most about what I do is being an effective

and motivating leader for my team and my peers,” says

David. “Fostering the right culture and having people who

are passionate and work closely together to achieve the

same goal is important. It’s a very different environment

from my finance days. In the creative world, the rewards

aren’t all financial.”

David is energetic; his life is fast-paced. Four months

each year he travels to stores, visiting anonymously to

observe consumers in action. In his downtime, he enjoys

racing cars at the racetrack and playing squash. As a

student and squash player at Milton, David was hugely

influenced by former coach and beloved faculty member

Frank Millet.

“When I was a student, he was a grandfather figure to

me on and off the squash courts,” says David, who

affectionately calls him FDM. “I apply what I learned from

him subconsciously in my work — lead by example, roll

up your sleeves and get to work. I once saw FDM fixing a

clogged toilet at the squash courts! Another time after

“Fostering the right culture and having people who are passionate and

work closely together to achieve the same goal is important. It’s a very

different environment from my finance days. In the creative world,

the rewards aren’t all financial.”

17s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

a match, he was the last person there, picking up the trash

all the students had left behind — their wrappers, their

drinks. He could easily have had someone else do it, but he

was doing it himself, and that moment stayed with me. I

learned there are no shortcuts. Everyone has to do their

time; put in the hard work and the hard work will pay off.”

David embraces the challenges of running a company

in the hypercompetitive retail market. He balances ambition

with pragmatic business sense, striving to keep a creative

element in his commercial enterprise.

“When you take a risk like this, a lot of naysayers

challenge your thought process or your strategy. When we

exited the U.S. market, industry people said it was going

to be the end of Evisu: ‘You don’t know what you are doing,

you are a finance guy!’ But that’s the beauty of not having

a fashion industry background, because I think differently.

I ask a lot of questions, talk to many different people, and

do my research. But at the end of the day I stick with my gut

instinct. Obviously, you have to be realistic and listen to

what people say, but at the same time, you have to dare to

challenge the norm, be confident in yourself and use your

best judgment.”

by Liz Matson

18 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      spacex.com     facebook.com/spacex    @spacex

Headed for Mars, On Schedule

c a s e f o u r r yA N S E b A S t I A N ’ 0 6 A N D H A r r y O ’ H A N l E y ’ 0 6

Ryan Sebastian and Harry O’Hanley, graduates in the Class of 2006 who were also

Class IV roommates in Goodwin, are among the designers, engineers and fabrication

specialists working on breakthrough aeronautics at the massive SpaceX headquarters

in Hawthorne, California. Ryan and Harry are immersed — for many intense hours

every day — in the design and operations of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Reaching beyond

what many of us may have considered the outer limits of human capability fills them

with enviable energy and purpose. This conversation with Ryan and Harry sheds some

light on the whys and hows of their lives with rockets today.

Were you the prototypical little guys shooting rockets off in empty fields while you were growing up? ryan: Definitely. I was always into rockets. My uncle

introduced me to rockets and I built them in my parents’

garage and launched them in the park fields nearby. I

couldn’t get enough; as I grew, so did my interest. I applied

rocketry to as many school science projects as I could

and kept flying bigger rockets in bigger fields. I found

rockets fascinating then and still do today. In terms of

engineering and design, rockets travel further and faster

than anything else man-made.

harry: Not at all. I really stumbled into this work. I was

always interested in engineering but had no intention

of going into aerospace. In fact, the beginning was hard,

because my background was not in aerospace.

A b O v E Portrait photos by Martin Berman.

O P P O S I t EPhotos courtesy SpaceX.

When did working on rockets become mainstream academic work? At Milton? ryan: At Milton. Mr. Gagnon, in particular, was totally

onboard with my investigation and exploration of rocketry.

Whenever I spent time away from Milton, I was building

rocket motors and developing solid propellants at home.

When it came time for my senior project, with Amanda

Brophy and Kathryn Evans, I designed, built and launched

an 11-foot, 85-pound rocket to an altitude of 1.5 miles.

I attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) for

college, where I majored in mechanical engineering with

an aerospace concentration. WPI had few institutionally

supported explorations in rocketry. Contrary to what I

expected, I had more support and encouragement at Milton

than at WPI. The projects I was involved with waned

while I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Ryan Sebastian ’06 and Harry O’Hanley ’06 of SpaceX are designing and executing breakthrough aeronautics.

19s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

SpaceX on a Need-to-Know basislocations SpaceX Headquarters Hawthorne, California

launch and landing sites Cape Canaveral, Florida (launch pad 39A, site of Apollo rocket launches); Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; and South Texas

rocket-development facility McGregor, Texas

Offices Houston, Texas; Chantilly, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Seattle, Washington

founder Elon Musk, entrepreneur whose other companies include zip2, PayPal, SolarCity and Tesla Motors

when it expects to have a fully certified, human-rated launch escape system incorporated into the spacecraft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

“As of February 17, 2015, SpaceX has completed 17 back-to-back successful missions on its Falcon 9 rocket.”

“Profitable and cash-flow positive, SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on its manifest, representing more than $5 billion in contracts. The SpaceX customer base is diverse, including space station resupply missions, commercial satellite launch missions, and U.S. government science and national security missions.” www.spacex.com

what is spacex? Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets. More than 3,500 employees work at SpaceX on this effort. www.spacex.com

In December 2008, SpaceX won a nASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. SpaceX will fly a minimum of 12 cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) for nASA; and in the near future SpaceX will carry crew as well. SpaceX is planning its first crewed Dragon/Falcon 9 flight in 2017,

20

vision Elon Musk believes that our becoming inter- planetary is the next key step in evolutionary life. If something is important enough to figure on the scale of evolution, he asserts, it’s worth our commitment and our resources.

“The lessons of history would suggest that civilizations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far — the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not. There could be some series of events that cause that technology level to decline. Given that this is the first time in 4.5 billion years where it’s been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we’d be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/17/elon-musk-mission-mars-spacex

firsts First privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket (Falcon 1) to reach orbit on September 28, 2008

First privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft (Dragon) on December 8, 2010

First private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the International Space Station on May 25, 2012

“It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth —  a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for nASA.” www.spacex.com

products Falcon 9: two-stage launch vehicle, designed from the beginning to be reusable and carry crew.

Falcon Heavy: heavy-lift launch vehicle, designed from the beginning to carry humans into space. Restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars.

Dragon: a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo and people into orbiting destinations.

“To control quality and costs, SpaceX designs, tests and fabricates the majority of its components in-house, including the Merlin, Kestrel, and Draco rocket engines used on the Falcon launch vehicles and the Dragon spacecraft. This has helped SpaceX to offer one of the lowest launch prices in the industry and to significantly reduce conventional rocket development time.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

s p a c e x o n a n e e d - t o - k n o w b a s i s , c o n t .

21s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

harry: I knew engineering was my thing, but rockets just

weren’t part of the picture for me early on. My undergrad

work at MIT concentrated on mechanical engineering. I

returned to MIT and got my master’s in nuclear engineering.

How did you get started, professionally?ryan: I started my career at Raytheon Missile Defense

Systems but at the advice of one of my WPI professors

began looking for a job in rocket propulsion to align my

career with my interests and get more involved in rocketry

as I had been before WPI. I moved to California to work

on solid rocket motors at Aerojet, where many space and

defense propulsion systems are built. Aerojet primarily

sells solid propellant systems in which the oxidizer and

fuel are premixed — cast and cured into a physical solid

contained within a chamber. Using a propellant that’s in

place and ready to be ignited when you need it has a

practical advantage in military situations. These motors

are very similar to what I was making in my garage.

At Aerojet, I led several teams working on different

projects. I enjoyed learning how to motivate people,

translate expectations, keep stakeholders and engineers

happy, and at the same time gain insight into solid

propulsion system designs. Although the technical work

was fascinating, the exposure to the business model

of the defense industry made me turn toward SpaceX.

harry: I interned at SpaceX in 2011, left to go to graduate

school, then returned to SpaceX in 2013. I’ve always

worked for SpaceX.

What are your days like at SpaceX?ryan: I am the Falcon 9 Second Stage Build Engineer.

[Falcon 9 is the two-stage rocket designed to launch

satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.] I connect

the build processes to the design and make sure we are

meeting the engineering intent in the physical rocket. The

h e a d e d f o r m a r s , o n s c h e d u l e , c o n t .

“At SpaceX there are clear goals, a ‘get it done’ attitude, and a persistent desire

to do better from all aspects, all while not throwing cost out the window.”

production “The SpaceX factory is vast and employs 3,000 people but is remarkably clean, bright and quiet. Technicians are casually dressed in shorts or jeans, sneakers or sandals. One group checks on a Falcon 9 launch system; across the corridor another works on protective fairings to encase cargo; a few yards from that a guy with goggles produces spare parts from a 3-D printer; in a sealed lab next door colleagues with hairnets and blue coats inspect equipment for a launch later this year, the company’s third supply mission for nASA.

“The factory exudes Silicon Valley’s no-fuss ethos, a streamlined contrast to nASA bureaucracy and bloat . . . . SpaceX’s focus on reusable technology has slashed costs —  the company says it can get an astronaut to the space station for $20 million, versus $70 million charged by Russia for a seat on a Soyuz rocket. SpaceX is testing reusable prototype rockets that can return to Earth intact, rather than burn up in the atmosphere. If successful, rockets could be reused like aeroplanes, cutting the price of a space mission to just $200,000, for fuel.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/17/elon-musk-mission-mars-spacex

sourceswww.spacex.com

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/ the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars

www.theguardian.com/technology/ 2013/jul/17/elon-musk-mission-mars-spacex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

O P P O S I t E Photos courtesy SpaceX.

22

teams need to be in continual communication to make

sure that the parts we’re building meet the design needs

and that those build processes are always improving.

harry: In terms of a position, I’m a Falcon 9 First Stage

Responsible Engineer. My job is to design and develop

the first-stage propulsion systems and provide launch

support. I can be at the design phase of the design operations

ladder or actually be driving the launch vehicle — that is,

on the console, in mission control, monitoring the rocket,

in Hawthorne or Cape Canaveral. There are plenty of

interesting engineering problems, and working all the

way along the ladder is great.

Can you talk about some of the challenges?ryan: Integrating myself into the liquid propellant rocket

world: Familiarizing myself with the rocket as a system

has been challenging but an excellent learning experience.

Ever-growing responsibility and insight in all aspects of

the rocket and SpaceX’s business tools are both a challenge

and an opportunity at SpaceX.

harry: Every person at SpaceX has an uncommon,

probably unrivaled, amount of freedom and responsibility

from day one. I enjoy that. When your work involves

operating systems you need to make decisions in real time,

like during the launch campaign.

How does the reality of your job compare with what “outsiders” might think your job involves?ryan: People might not realize the level of detailed work

that is involved in every aspect of the vehicle. Every

item goes through design and analysis before it is built,

inspected and tested. The reality of the job is managing

the minute details to make sure that the components and

vehicle are ultimately successful.

harry: The schedule at SpaceX is very impressive. We

turn things around at a fast speed. You go from concept to

seeing something “real” quickly. Typically, we complete

things on the order of days, rather than months or years,

as in some businesses.

What do you draw upon from your personal tool kit most often?ryan: My interest in searching for the root cause of an

outcome, the driver behind a result. I learned to investigate

and understand issues while building and flying amateur

rockets; any outcome would be the result of the level of

detailed thinking I did beforehand. Because of that experi-

ence, I enjoy digging into the details of systems and problems.

harry: Operations necessarily generate huge data sets.

They’re complex. You need to form an understanding

quickly, about what happened or what is about to happen.

You need a fundamental understanding of the system to

do this. I’ve always been good at forcing myself to dig deep

and understand the system I’m working on so that I can

intrinsically know what’s going on.

What do you love most about your work now?ryan: Besides being able to work on rockets? The

environment: At SpaceX there are clear goals, a “get it done”

attitude, and a persistent desire to do better from all

aspects, all while not throwing cost out the window. There’s

a confidence that we can and will accomplish things that

haven’t been done before. It’s fast-paced, collaborative, and

people are excited. I love coming into work and being

surrounded by people so passionate every day.

harry: It’s the freedom and responsibility tension that I

like the most. It gives me the sense that I control my own

destiny. I work on high-tech Falcon rockets and having direct

responsibility on the vehicle does it for me. Some cool stuff

is going on here that isn’t going on elsewhere. There’s lots of

responsibility throughout SpaceX; it’s a unique company.

We’re involved in the next frontier.

by Cathleen Everett

h e a d e d f o r m a r s , o n s c h e d u l e , c o n t .

“Operations necessarily generate huge data sets. They’re complex. You

need to form an understanding quickly, about what happened or what is

about to happen.”

M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      spacex.com     facebook.com/spacex    @spacex

23s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

c a s e f i v e l A M O N t g O r D O N ’ 8 7

Buoyed by an admission brochure and encouragement from his father,

Lamont applied and earned a full scholarship. Move-in day was the first

time he set foot on Milton’s campus. “Milton was a great opportunity for me,

but it was also my only opportunity,” he says. “I had no options at home.

Milton changed the trajectory of my life.”

Today, Lamont is professionally dedicated to educational access and

equity. He discovered the Posse Foundation while working at Brown, his

alma mater, helping to scale up the university’s impact on public education.

The Posse Foundation helps young people — many of whom would be

overlooked by traditional admission processes — attend some of the

country’s top colleges and universities. “I was impressed with the mission,

the model and the outcomes,” he says. “The program was perfectly in line

with my career interests and goals.”

Posse has partnerships with 51 top-tier colleges and universities,

and places 10 students each year into each entering class of

schools like Dartmouth, UVA, Boston University,

Tulane, Cornell and Wesleyan. The name

“Posse” refers to the linchpin of

the program’s success.

Growing up in Washington, D.C., son of a single father,

Lamont Gordon ’87 attended seven different schools

through eighth grade. Most of his family didn’t graduate

from high school; no one had gone to college. When

he discovered Milton through a summer enrichment

program, boarding school was an unknown concept.

Lamont Gordon ’87

the Power of a

24 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      possefoundation.org     facebook.com/possefoundation

A b O v EPhoto by Sheila Griffin.

P r E v I O u S PA g EPhoto by Akintola Hanif.

O P P O S I t EPhoto courtesy the Posse Foundation.

“The name and the model developed from student

feedback,” says Lamont. “Students need a network when

they’re leaving their own communities and transitioning

to these colleges and universities.”

Founder and president Deborah Bial earned a

MacArthur “Genius Grant” for the overwhelming success

of Posse’s cohort model and outstanding graduation rate.

Founded in 1989, Posse has helped place more than 6,200

young people and maintains a graduation rate of 90 percent.

Lamont began with Posse as director of the Boston office,

which serves about 300 students each year from the city’s

public schools. Eager to be part of the foundation’s strategic

direction, he became an associate vice president in January

2014, based at the national headquarters in New York City.

Posse’s partner schools commit to admitting the

selected cohort of students and providing a full scholarship

for each student, over four years. Posse recruits the

students, prepares them, and provides the support that

helps them succeed.

The foundation works from nominations from the

public school system and community-based organizations;

students are accepted into the program in December

of their senior year in high school. (In 2014, 700 students

were admitted from a pool of 16,000 nominees.) Posse’s

admission process pushes back on traditional admission

criteria, which are dominated by SAT scores. “We’re

not just looking for academically talented students, we’re

looking for leaders,” says Lamont. “We’re looking for

students who work well with a team, communicate well,

are strategic thinkers, and who will bring those skills to

campus and to the workforce. The best way for us to assess

these qualities is to see them in action.”

The program achieves that observation and selection

through their Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP). During

the DAP, students problem solve during activities large

and small, which allows them to showcase their qualitative

skills. Evaluators walk around the room, observing,

taking careful notes. After a second round of traditional

interviews, students rank their top three school choices.

By accepting a spot in a posse, students effectively enter

25s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

into an early decision agreement.

Once admitted to the program, Posse Scholars partici-

pate in weekly workshops on team building, leadership

development, cross-cultural communication, and academic

awareness from January until August, preparing for the

transition to campus. They anticipate and discuss the

challenges ahead and figure out how to access resources.

“Posse is an asset-based organization,” says Lamont.

“We focus on our students’ strengths. When students say,

‘I can’t do this,’ we say, ‘Yes you can.’ They may not be used

to hearing that message, but they internalize it. Posse is

a merit-based scholarship. Kids are here because they’re

smart, driven, accomplished students with great potential

and strong academic backgrounds, well prepared, and

with every right to be there.

“We’re not simply a diversity program, but that’s part

of what schools are looking for. They also partner with

us because they know our scholars are going to graduate,

and they’re looking for leaders who are going to be active,

contributing members of their campuses.”

These days, Lamont is expanding several key initiatives

from Posse’s recent strategic plan. Those include the

foundation’s career and alumni programming, graduate and

fellowship opportunities, and the new veterans initiative.

“Posse Scholars graduate and become leaders in the

workforce, so we want to help them think about long-term

goals as soon as they enter the program,” says Lamont.

“Our model is based on partnering with undergraduate

institutions, but we have affiliations with some top graduate

programs as well. We want to create a culture where

students know about fellowship opportunities and they

know they have access to them. We learned that 40 percent

of Posse alumni were pursuing or had earned graduate

degrees two years after college, but many were not going

to top-tier programs. We want to help students see

themselves as eligible and then help position them well.”

Posse’s Veterans Program leverages the cohort model

to serve post-9/11 military veterans looking to earn

bachelor’s degrees at top schools. Vassar was the first

school to admit a Veterans Posse; Wesleyan was next,

and Dartmouth committed in 2014. Posse is applying its

cohort model — which has been successful with younger

students for 25 years — to a new population with very

different needs. Lamont oversees a team that is working

to help build a strong nomination network, and gain

a foothold in veterans’ community programs and the

military’s transition services. They are thinking through

what a “posse” means for 20- and 30-year-olds, some with

families of their own.

Posse operates in nine cities across the country and is

opening its tenth site in San Francisco this year. Not only

is Posse changing life opportunities for students, but it’s

also stimulating changes in the way colleges approach

evaluating students for success. “The program is not just

about college access and graduating — it’s about looking

at the people running this country, and wanting to make

sure those decision makers represent the diversity of the

United States. When a 12th grader steps into that room, we

want to be able to determine whether she might one day

be running Citibank, spearheading medical research, or

starting a nonprofit. If so, we want to help her get there.”

by Erin Berg

26 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

a t m i l t o n t H E M E N t O r P r O g r A M

Mentors: Honest talk About teachingYou won’t catch Lydia Thorp walking. If she runs she can get where she needs to be

on campus, just barely. Lydia has taught Spanish at Milton since 2010, and she lives in

Millet House. Twice each week she also attends classes taught by new Milton faculty

members. She sits alongside students taking Spanish III with José Benítez-Meléndez;

and she leans on the art tables with students in the Drawing course that Jenny Hughes

teaches. Each week Lydia also meets with José and with Jenny separately, so they can

talk about what she observed.

Chiseled out of schedules that are famously tight, a new

mentoring program links eight veteran Milton teachers

with 14 teachers new to the School for work over several

years. In year one, they spend their most significant time

observing one another and reflecting on what they see.

Launched this year, Milton’s Mentor Program

deliberately creates a non-evaluative space for new faculty

to ask questions, talk honestly about teaching, and learn

about the School.

a WEEK’s ChroniClEJosé’s smile is as wide as the classroom door; he greets

each of his students in Spanish, with a separate comment.

The moment they’re seated he moves them into a discussion,

completely in Spanish, about travel and vacations. Through

quick “Q&A,” reacting and playing off their answers, José

records words, phrases, concepts. His follow-up questions

generate more — about logistics, people, what happens at

the airport. Once their web of words consumes the

whiteboard space, José sets up a quiz game. Teams of

three: two kids sit facing the class; a third stands, facing his

teammates. The standing team member must give apt

enough clues (in Spanish, of course) that his teammates

successfully guess a particular word. The clock is ticking.

Teammates rotate sitting and standing. Five teams of

three keep the game hopping. One team will ultimately win.

The students are invested — anticipating their own team’s

turn; watching the cues; guessing the right word; keeping

track of the score. José closes the class with a worksheet.

The pulse of the class never falters.

Lydia watches, smiles, take notes continually. Using

a chart, she tracks the progress and timing of elements

within the class (travel vocabulary build-out; quiz game

gamble; worksheet closure). She records José’s techniques,

his interaction with students (who speaks, how often,

who doesn’t). She notes how students arrange themselves

in the room: Can José connect visually with each student?

She and José have already discussed his objective for

this class, so she notes what happens compared to what

he had planned. In follow-up classes, José plans to build

organically toward the grammar and usage complexity

involved in the concepts they launched together today.

“I’ve always looked for feedback,” José says. “I like

concrete facts. They give me constructive feedback; general

comments do not. For instance, I’d like comments about

my writing on the board, how I communicate the definition

of a word, the pace of the class, to what extent students were

involved, and did the material and the activities vary enough.

“I want feedback from students as well,” he says. “I’m

impressed at Milton’s willingness to get students’ feedback.

I’d like to know what they think of the homework, whether

they like the stories we’re reading, whether the pace of the

course is okay. They might tell me, for instance, ‘It’s okay for

honors; a little fast for non-honors level.’”All photos by John Gillooly.

27s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

28 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

“Getting to know the academic culture of the School, the

expectations within this environment — mentors can help,”

Lydia explains. “Going into this, I anticipated explicitly

observing teaching and learning. Often other things come

up too, part of teachers’ daily lives that affect their teaching,

assumptions you don’t realize you make if you’ve worked

here for a while. For instance, what it means to live in the

dorm and interact with students day and night; or comment

writing; or particular idiosyncracies of the Milton schedule.

“José planned the vocabulary lesson to stage his teaching

of the grammar,” Lydia explains. “His methodology is

more organic, whereas I use a kind of ‘equation’ format to

help kids understand grammar. It will be interesting for

both of us to see which students respond to each of these

two approaches, as we observe one another over time. I

document what José’s process was, and I watch for a general

gauge of students’ reaction to the material and the process.

I take note, too, of whether any kids drifted off into their own

conversations, and how consistently they seemed to focus

on what was happening. Clearly, doing this with José makes

me reflect intensely on my own practice.”

Jenny Hughes is slight, relaxed and soft-spoken. Without

raising her voice, she owns every student’s attention as

she reviews the project they’ve undertaken. Each one is

developing a poster, an ad, a book or a DVD in Photoshop

for printing in large format. They work from an image, a

drawing or a photo (their own, or one they’ve found online);

they conceive a plan, then use attributes in Photoshop

to design an original treatment. It cannot be a reflection of

some other promotional material or image that already

exists. Students move from the art table to desktop

computers in the digital design lab. Some students are

Photoshop “pros”; some are Photoshop-phobic. Each

student dives in, and different types of individual requests

pop up quickly: One boy needs an explicit explanation;

someone else needs an approach to a technical problem;

another is looking for an interim critique. Jenny moves

around the room, responding calmly and thoroughly,

person by person. Regardless of a student’s starting place,

Jenny helps him or her gain the ground that makes an

independent follow-up step possible. One student, for

instance, was having trouble moving her drawing from her

email inbox to Photoshop so she could work with it. Jenny

ultimately got a camera and reshot the image, saved it to the

hard drive where the student was working, and helped

her browse to find it and move it into Photoshop. Students

ask one another for help as well. They all seem to know

who can help with what. Their project choices are diverse:

a poster advertising an NFL game; a highway sign to

advertise a movie; a book cover designed around the profile

images of the characters; and an ad for Planet of the Apes,

creating a visual treatment from a tiny element of the

original promotion. In one class, Jenny needed to be an

unflappable resource, teaching general digital skills,

Photoshop application specialties, design considerations,

and artistic conceptualization.

Once Jenny had launched the class, Lydia walked around

the room, noting the number and pace and range of

questions from and responses to students. She observed the

designers at work, watching to see how each was making

progress independently. Lydia drew a “map” of the work

29s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

stations in the room and numbered the students so she

could keep track, for Jenny, of which students asked how

many and what kind of questions during class.

Like José, Jenny was eager for what Lydia’s observation

could bring to light. Boys asked fewer questions, it turned

out, although all the students wanted Jenny’s help, from the

experienced kids to the novices. The two teachers looked

at Lydia’s map and the patterns of interaction. “As a

department, we’re working on integrating art and tech-

nology,” Jenny says. “This project puts the two together,

and we’ll see how the differences in Photoshop familiarity

work out. Once we know, we can stay with this plan, or

consider giving students several smaller projects that build

to this larger one. Or, I could present Photoshop tools in

one class — how to add text, enlarge or size down, select and

erase color. Each person would have to learn quickly, but

at least everyone would have the basics when we started

the project.”

Lydia went on to ask Jenny about the status of her

advisees. They had been talking over the semester about

effective supportive steps for different students. They

rounded out their meeting by previewing the challenge of

Milton’s January schedule. “I know I’m always surprised

at how quickly we move from break, through to review, to

exams,” Lydia said, “and I thought you might want to

think about how the month would go.”

Observation is frequent and steady (at least once,

weekly) and the debriefing meetings follow at the same

rhythmic pace. Those logistics are one key element, and

new skills are another. Milton mentors reflexively start

observing by relying on how they have been observed

in the past, and that was mostly for their own evaluations,

Lydia explains. Training for the mentor team, which

happens both on and off campus, redefines observation.

“You need to begin with a clear understanding of what

a teacher’s specific objective is for a class,” Lydia says.

Natural tendencies to critique or praise, or both, need to be

refocused on a different kind of attention, recording and

reviewing. Mentors also learn about instructional coaching,

goal setting, diversity, and Milton’s recently crafted

“Principles of Teaching and Learning.”

“We learn so much from each other,” Lydia says

frequently. “Across disciplines, levels, vastly different

kinds of learners, and diverse teaching strategies,

the growth that goes on is absolutely reciprocal.” These

teachers seem to have a tactile feel for each other’s styles

and motivations, energy and ways of connecting with kids.

Their meetings give them insight into how a particular

person parses a teaching challenge and plans to approach

it. Each of them learns how that effort worked, in real

time. They can help one another be aware of the socio-

cultural issues active in teenagers’ lives, their fears, their

expectations about their own competencies, or how they

understand risk.

Observation by your colleagues is a luxury; teachers

know that. It’s also a nearly invaluable asset; a discrete

skill; and a powerful motivator for growth. The bonus,

when veteran and newer teachers observe one another, is

reciprocal growth. That was fully anticipated — now it’s

being fully appreciated.

by Cathleen Everett

José benítez-Meléndez earned his bachelor’s degree in Spanish education with minors in French and Italian from the University of Puerto Rico. José earned his master’s degree from Middlebury College in Mediterranean studies, Spanish, and Italian. José has tutored students in Florence, Italy; instructed kindergarteners in Romania; and, most recently, taught Spanish and lived in a dormitory at the Darrow School. José lives in Wolcott House.

Jennifer Hughes of the visual arts department earned her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and her master’s degree in printmaking from the University of Iowa. Since 2009 she has served as studio manager at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where she has also served as an instructor. Jennifer has taught at the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain; at Tufts University’s Experimental College; and at the Boston Architectural College. A practicing artist, she has held solo shows at Harvard University’s Holyoke Center Arcade Gallery and Roxbury Community College.

lydia thorp joined the Milton faculty in 2010. A graduate of Skidmore College, Lydia lived in Madrid for eight years before moving to Milton, and she served as an admission representative at the Madrid campus of Saint Louis University. Earlier in her career, Lydia taught Spanish, served as a dorm parent, and coached at the Westtown School in Pennsylvania.

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Engineering Solutions for a Species in Peril “Engineering is the future, and young people are primed to learn about it,”

says Phoebe Ryles, Milton’s Lower School woodworking teacher. “To

design and construct, children have to think through steps and decide

what should come next. You just need the right project to launch 8-year-

olds into this work.”

Inspired by a program on cutting-edge engineering

curriculum developed by the Museum of Science, Phoebe

leveraged the Grade 3 Monarch butterfly unit. Phoebe

charged her students with researching, designing,

building and installing a 4×8 foot raised planting bed —

a butterfly way station. With teachers Jane McGuinness

and Susan Wheelwright, third graders learn about

the Monarch’s life cycle; they raise butterflies from the

caterpillar stage and learn about habitat, diet, and

migration patterns.

In recent years, students also learn that Monarch

butterflies could become extinct, because their natural

habitat is being destroyed. Each year, migrating Monarchs

lay their eggs on abundant milkweed. Housing and

commercial development, as well as the increasing growth

of genetically modified corn, has decreased the wild

milkweed. An intercontinental movement is working at

placing way stations strategically, at points where the

butterflies can feed and lay their eggs. In building their

raised-bed way station and planting it with the right flora,

Milton students learned that they could help reverse the

decline in the Monarch population.

The third graders began by examining other raised

beds on campus and asking their own questions: How are

they joined at the corners? Are any weak or breaking? What

kind of lumber was used? Together, based on their research

and experience, the students design what they hypothesize

will work. Phoebe walks the children explicitly through

the Engineering Design Process — a five-stage course of

asking questions and solving problems: Ask, Imagine, Plan,

Create, Improve.

Students build models — several — and then test them.

They learn as much from the failed ideas as they do

from their success. From drawing plans on paper, they

move to cardboard models, to building “to scale” models.

Challenges are many, and often unexpected. “We’re

problem solving in real time, all the way through,” says

Phoebe. “For instance, if we run out of wood, we need

to reassess and come up with a new plan. I’m trying to

teach the children to be resourceful and think through

challenges. I tell them, ‘You made it, so you can fix it.’”

Children rely on concepts of fractions and

division — math above their grade level. When the time

comes to learn about division, they’re prepared and excited.

“These children gain confidence based on ability,”

says Phoebe. “Assembling and installing the raised bed

means manipulating — lifting, measuring, cutting — solid

2×12 boards. The students do the lifting on their own!

They figure out how to work together, and they feel capable,

because they are.”

a t m i l t o n I N t E r D I S C I P l I N A r y A C t I O N I N g r A D E 3

31s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

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i n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y a c t i o n i n g r a d e 3 , c o n t .

Students need to apply what they’ve learned of life

science (keeping data, forming hypotheses) to this

engineering-math-woodworking collaboration. With

Spanish teacher Lucia Castineira, students learn the related

Spanish vocabulary and test it, connecting via Skype with

peers in Mexico — other young people committed to this

cause. Students use the Internet program Journey North

to track the butterflies’ migration north and south; they

keep track of current events; and they artistically express

what they’re learning in nature journals.

“We’re focused on extending and connecting lessons

throughout the year,” says Grade 3 teacher Jane McGuinness.

“Students bring in New York Times articles about the declining

Monarch population that they’ve found online with their

parents. On top of everything else, they’re using technology

well to help with their research.”

“Grit is a top predictor of success, and this is what they’re experiencing.

The physicality of woodworking makes it appealing and tangible. Creating a

concrete, practical product makes this learning real for [the students].”

33s p r i n g 2 0 1 5 33S P r I N g 2 0 1 5

“This unit involves many academic skills, but it also

appeals to students’ character, persistence, desire to

do good,” says Phoebe. “Grit is a top predictor of success,

and this is what they’re experiencing. The physicality

of woodworking makes it appealing and tangible. Creating

a concrete, practical product makes this learning real

for them. Students love helping a creature they’ve come

to care about. We’re helping them develop great habits —

being good citizens, communicating, compromising

productively, and persevering in the face of challenge.”

by Erin Berg

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Hall of Famer Coach Mac Reaches 200 Career Winsby Liz Matson

s p o r t s

A perfect day for football. Cool and breezy with peeks of

sun. The last game of the season against rival Nobles

and Greenough. As always, Coach Kevin MacDonald, or

“Coach Mac,” is the first to arrive at the Robert Saltonstall

Gym — getting organized and filling water jugs. A man of

habits and rituals, he calls himself “obsessive compulsive.”

“I always sleep the night before, but before games, I’m

very nervous,” says Coach Mac, who was inducted into

the Massachusetts Football Coaches Association Hall of

Fame last spring. “The kids will tell you that I pace. I’m

always pacing. I feel that if I’m not nervous, they’re not

going to think it’s an important game.”

When the team takes the field, Coach Mac paces the

sideline, carrying his clipboard, his face set in concentration.

A win against Nobles would be the season’s highlight. And

this win would be Coach Mac’s 200th career win as a

football coach. A huge milestone in any coach’s career. The

players are amped up, knowing what is riding on this game.

As an undergraduate at College of the Holy Cross,

where he played hockey and football, Coach Mac knew

he wanted to be a teacher and a coach. His first job was

teaching English and history, and assistant coaching hockey

and football at Archbishop Williams High School in

Braintree, Massachusetts.

“I was lucky to work for Joe Crowley, a legendary

football coach,” says Kevin. “His theory is that football is

not complicated; it’s a simple game. He ran only four plays,

but the players always knew what they were doing. He

was very consistent. We went from being one of the worst

programs around to one of the best programs around.”

After two years, Coach Mac became head coach when

Coach Crowley retired. He continued winning at Archie’s

for 19 years before coming to Milton in 1996. He continued

the upward trajectory of the Milton football program that

his immediate predecessor, Joe Lang, had begun. He

also excelled in the classroom, and he still enjoys teaching

35s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

When Justin Yoon ’15 first arrived at Milton in Class IV, his athletic focus was hockey. This spring, he graduates as one of the top-ranked high school football kickers in the country and will bring his talent to notre Dame. He will be the starting kicker for the Fighting Irish and a student in the Mendoza College of Business.

From nashville, Tennessee, Justin started playing football in eighth grade, after a middle school coach took notice of his soccer kicking skills. He pursued this kicking talent at summer football camps. His spot-on, long-range kicks added a new dimension to Milton football, and Justin credits Coach Mac for his support.

“He really trusts me, and that trust factor makes me believe in him, as he believes in me,” says Justin. “It’s not always easy to trust the kicker to get the job done. I respect Coach Mac for letting me do what I do and believing in me.”

Justin says one of his most memorable games was Milton’s 27–21 win over Lawrence Academy in his sophomore year, in which he blasted four successful field goals, the final one from an amazing 54 yards. These long kicks led to Justin being selected to play in the 2015 Under Armour All-American Bowl Game this past January. Justin was spot on and set records for most field goals made (three) and longest field goal made (47 yards) in the seven-year history of the bowl game.

A dedicated student, Justin’s work ethic is strong, both on and off the field. When he was injured in the season opener this year, Justin turned his focus to rehabilitating his injury, but he also spent hours mentoring Min Park ’17 to be Milton’s next kicker. Justin says although it was frustrating to miss five games this past season, he enjoyed what has always been his favorite part of Milton football: “Just spending time with the team and being around my friends on the field.” And when he was back in form for the last game against nobles, Justin capped off his Milton career with a 49-yard kick.

Justin Yoon ’15, a National Top Ranked Kicker

“You could be a great coach as far as wins and losses go, and not be a

great high school coach. A high school coach needs to be a good

role model. You should be teaching right from wrong. You should be helping to get students into

college. That’s why high school coaching is so rewarding.”

Expository Writing. It is telling of his coaching and teaching

that former players and students make up the majority of

his coaching staff.

The Mustangs are dominant in this Milton–Nobles game,

up 21–0 in the first half. Coach Mac, pacing, bellows across

the field: “Don’t relax! Do. Not. Relax!” His go-to phrases

both encourage and direct the action: “Dish it out, don’t take

it!” “Kick and stick!” and “Poison! Poison!” when he doesn’t

want a player to touch the ball. He compliments players and

notes sportsmanship as he sees it. In the last two minutes of

the game when Milton is up 40–7, Coach Mac finally releases

the tension in his face. The players can’t contain their

excitement over the win. When Coach goes out to shake the

Nobles coach’s hand, his players swarm him, shouting and

whooping, and Coach Mac’s smile is big and wide.

“Winning is important,” says Kevin. “That is your chief

goal. But you could be a great coach as far as wins and losses

go, and not be a great high school coach. A high school coach

needs to be a good role model. You should be teaching right

from wrong. You should be helping to get students into

college. That’s why high school coaching is so rewarding.”

When the season ends, Coach Mac is busier than ever.

First up is working with seniors and helping them through

the college process. Over the school year, roughly 100 college

football coaches visit Milton on recruiting trips. Coach

Mac handles this constant flow of visitors, maintaining an

important network. He also keeps tabs on the juniors as

they start their college plans. In the summer, he works at

various college football camps where he can “advocate for

our players.”

36

s p o r t s , c o n t .

Since Coach Mac shines the spotlight on his players rather than himself, we asked some Milton football alumni for their thoughts on Coach Mac. The stories poured in.

the Championship in ’14“I was the starting quarterback for three years and a senior captain under Coach Mac. Playing for Milton and Coach Mac was an honor. Before every game he would talk about the word ‘pride.’ Before Milton, that word didn’t mean much to me, but when I left it meant a whole lot. He taught me how to take pride in my studies, athletics and my day-to-day life. He strived for his players to be ‘good guys’ on campus and to do the little things — hold doors open for people, or thank the staff in Forbes. He was one of the most approachable people on campus, always willing to lend a hand and lead me in the right direction if I struggled with a class or any aspect of School life.

My greatest memory was winning the new England Championship my senior year. Winning it with Coach Mac was so gratifying, because our team had grown with him over my three years. We were a below average football team during my sophomore year, and one of the best in new England my senior year.”  — anthony scurto ’14

this Milestone“Coach Mac was a fantastic coach and role model for me when I played fullback and linebacker. I learned about being a team player and challenging myself both on the field and in the classroom. I have wonderful memories of Milton and many are related to playing for Coach Mac from 2001 to 2005. He is a great coach, a great mentor, and most importantly a great person. He has had a huge influence on many young men who have graduated from Milton, and the 200th win is a testament to his dedication and commitment to players, present and past. An amazing milestone and well deserved.” — ryan fitzpatrick ’05

Coach Mac, year one“I had high expectations and a lot invested in Coach Mac’s inaugural season at Milton. My teammates were equally invested. With the 100th Milton–nobles game as the ’96 season headliner, nothing short of an undefeated season was acceptable to any player on the roster. Anticipation and curiosity took a hairpin turn toward concern during our first team meeting with Coach Mac when we learned that our balanced, offensive attack would be overhauled into a run-only offense, reminiscent of the Vince Lombardi days, when a pass was considered a trick play. Coach Mac didn’t give our concern an opportunity to fester. His actions made it clear that he had just as much riding on the ’96 season; our goals were aligned.

Coach Mac led with hard work, accountability, perseverance and pride, and the latter singularly defined our ’96 season. He dove in with his players, especially his seniors, taking an interest in all of their pursuits. He maximized his players’ ability with daily encouragement and unwavering support. Coach Mac naturally gravitated toward the tradition and rivalry at Milton Academy. He embraced and valued Herbert “Stokie” Stokinger, and made Stokie the focal point of the 100th Milton–nobles game.

To say that Coach Mac’s first season at Milton was a success is an understatement. not only did he lead the ’96 team to victory in the 100th Milton–nobles game, he also made good on an undefeated season and added a new England Championship for good measure. With Coach Mac, the lessons we learned on the field were as valuable as the lessons we learned in the classroom. On behalf of the ’96 team, and all his players, congratulations on a hall of fame coaching career and teaching excellence.” — alexi evriviades ’96

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37s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

the fundamentals“I was the running back in 2003 and 2004 when we went a combined 13–2–1. Coach Mac was not about trick plays or snazzy, spread offenses. He believed in fundamentals, doing your job, and simply being stronger, faster, and better prepared than the opposition.” — timothy daniels ’04

the Joy of the game“Coach Mac’s competitiveness and focus are matched by his integrity and desire to see his players succeed. He loves seeing his players get where they want to go, in football and in life. Mac always has a plan and a reason for what he is doing — a seemingly crazy drill or pre-game pep talk. It usually sets you up to succeed and to learn, which are often the same thing.

Coach Mac also has a ton of fun, and he instills the joy of the game in his players. He enjoys victories for the same reason players do. He gets pumped up, hates to lose, and can’t wait to get back to work for the next week.

Coach Mac doesn’t get caught up in the hype or the moment, and he embodies what he preaches: living up to your own best standards, keeping your word, never giving up, and working not just for yourself but also for those around you.

I feel honored to have spent time with him on the football field and to have had his guidance; and I would not be the person I am today had it not been for Coach Mac. He has a generous spirit and understands what truly brings satisfaction in life. It’s really great to recognize him for reaching this milestone. He deserves every accolade. He’s a legend.” — tom pilla ’02

a game of Emotion“I played tailback for Coach Mac from 1996 to 1999 and went on to play for Brown University. I was lucky enough to be a part of Coach Mac’s first Milton Academy team that went 8–0 and won the new England Championship. Coach Mac made it clear from day one that our goal was to be the number one team in the ISL. He brought a winning attitude. By the time we opened the season, he had instilled so much confidence in us that we felt unbeatable. Coach Mac told us that ‘football was a game of emotion.’ He used our emotion to motivate and inspire us. He played the underdog card to get us fired up for a big game, to inspire us to be our best and compete fiercely for ourselves, our families, our School and for each other.

We all loved and respected Coach Mac’s hard-nosed philosophy. no frills, finesse or trick plays, just old-fashioned man-on-man football. He demanded that we be the most fit team, and that often showed up in the fourth quarter of games. Coach Mac gave us a platform to be ourselves and to succeed in doing so. Down 20–0 at the half against Thayer (for the new England Championship), there was no panic in the locker room. We had been coached to respond to adversity and to dig deep. We won that game 21–20.

I learned so much from Coach Mac about the value of hard work, preparation, and an emotional commitment to the task at hand. Running into guys I played with and reliving some of the special moments is fun. I am excited for Coach Mac’s 200th win and proud to have been a small part of his legacy.”  — leo evriviades ’99

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f a c u l t y p e r s p e c t i v e

Comebackby Jim Connolly, English faculty

Jim Connolly of the English department, who has taught creative writing at Milton since 1983, has long been a poet and writer of fiction. The textbook devoted to teaching poetry that Jim developed is unique in including students’ writing and commentary. He has shared this text with many educators —  individual practitioners eager to maximize their effective ness in the discrete art of understanding teaching and teaching poetry. Jim’s poem, “Comeback,” is included in his recently published collection, Picking Up the Bodies. Jim is now at work on a novel.

39S P r I N g 2 0 1 5

Rocco Francis Marchegiano:

I met him once. He shook my hand,

said “Nice to meet you, kid” and looked

away, money on his mind.

I was with his nephew. I said

“Nice to meet you, champ” and looked

away. I was sixteen,

my own hits and licks on my mind.

Our city’s legend retired

into a dull weight of fame —

overrated, underrated —

and death in 1969,

Newton, Iowa, a mangled plane.

His body flown home to Brockton,

to our family’s funeral home,

my grandfather buried him —

my father, the embalmer, touched him up.

In 1970, I went to Des Moines, Iowa

to teach and met Lowell Coburn,

the young undertaker who shipped Rocky’s corpse

back home to Brockton.

He lived next door. “Nice to meet you,”

he said. “Coincidence is what death can give us.”

And when I returned to Brockton,

a beaten-up place with window grates

on Main Street’s abandoned stores,

the steel defending against the nothing that is left,

I couldn’t find the signs of my

old hometown. At George’s Café,

one of the city’s last landmarks,

I walked through its rooms to study

all the newspaper clippings and photos hanging

on the restaurant’s walls.

I stalked each fight in search

of the city that was gone:

Below Rocky’s photos, Ali snaps a left

through the bloody mouth of Cooper,

and Hagler’s right cross clubs

the “Motor City Cobra’s” chin,

a right, that night, as right as right,

the “Hit Man’s” legs collapsing,

his eyes on queer street,

that bewildered look that takes me

back to the rings and heavy bags

of my youth, all the bad words,

the punches given and taken.

They come back to me like letters

through a chute, the forgotten words

of a boy who learned the lessons

that each fist delivered: fight

to the death, be willing to die

on each street corner,

every win and defeat another notch

in a reputation that tells you

who you are —

I was a dumb kid,

I say to myself, who has grown old and dumb,

neither embarrassed by it nor proud of it —

we were boys who grew up in our fists.

And, today, I wonder what Rocky would say

about The Brockton Enterprise’s front page news,

the heroin addiction infecting our city,

the headlines spreading across the country,

the White House announcing

the match between the government

and the bad batch of stuff

that’s killing our city’s immigrants

in staggering numbers, the newspapers recording

each day’s deaths like judges scoring the rounds

of a one-sided fight.

And I remember my grandfather

chalking the names of the deceased on his blackboard,

the posting of the wakes and funerals.

I stare Rocky down once more.

Hanging high above the other boxers,

his right arm is raised in victory,

and that right hand, famous,

now, and then, is always

coming back to me, heroic

in that night of near defeat against Walcott,

our champ coming back in the thirteenth round,

that right smashing into Jersey Joe’s jaw,

a bullet in a bolt that locks shut —

what we had and can never get back.

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i n s i g h t

BeatnikNanseera Wolff , Class IV, Robbins House. Photo by Michael Dwyer.

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o n c e n t r e

John P. Reardon ’56 Receives the Milton Medal

On January 23, 2015, the Milton Academy Board of Trustees

awarded the Milton Medal to Jack Reardon, a longtime

trustee and a wise and loyal supporter of his School.

Head of School Todd Bland recalled the dinner meeting

in 2008 that he and his wife, Nancy, shared with Jack

Reardon and Brad Bloom — an evening that solidified Todd’s

decision to serve as Milton’s head of school. He spoke

about the supportive care and insight that Jack reliably

and generously provided throughout Todd’s last six

years. Similarly, Brad Bloom credited Jack with his own

willingness to assume the presidency of Milton’s board.

Brad noted, in particular, Jack’s ability and willingness

to listen, and his effectiveness in helping institutions

understand what challenges should be addressed, and

what changes should occur. “Four heads of school — Ed

Fredie, Robin Robertson, Rick Hardy and Todd Bland —

and four board presidents — Harold Janeway, Marshall

Schwarz, Fritz Hobbs and I — sought his counsel,” Brad

said. “In every conversation, public or private, Jack is

steady, calm, and focused on the point. He responds with

candor, wisdom and sensitivity, regardless of the issue. He

frames the importance of a decision in few but relevant

words. We all try to understand the full measure of each

of those words.”

As he delivered the Milton Medal Award, Brad sum-

moned Mr. Frank Millet’s words about Jack from just

that week: “Jack has a wonderful way with people. When

you talk with him, you know that you have his full attention.

If you want something, he will do the best he can to honor

that. He’s regularly in contact with many people and he has

many friends. He understands the essence of a person, no

matter the person’s age. He’s been devoted to Milton since

1956. He’s a very loyal person.”

“Jack’s service to Milton has been vast, deep and

meaningful,” Brad concluded. “He epitomizes the life and

spirit of Dare to be True. Jack, we are aware and most

grateful for your decades of commitment, engagement and

service to Milton. Please join me in thanking my friend

and mentor, Jack Reardon, recipient of the Milton Medal.”

Citation from the Milton Medal programJack Reardon was elected to the board of trustees in 1991.

With skill, loyalty and generosity, Jack supported every

aspect of Milton’s institutional strength until and beyond his

retirement from the board in 2013. Jack began by chairing

the campaign steering committee in 1992 that prepared

for Milton’s first comprehensive capital campaign. “The

Challenge to Lead” raised $60 million from 1995–2000, and

expanded the supportive connections with alumni and

parents that would be a critical foundation for meeting

Milton’s aspirations in the future. Jack chaired the Trustees

Committee during his tenure, guiding trustees and trustee

practices, informed by his unfailing acumen about matters

of governance. That position signaled a much broader port-

folio: trusted emissary, diplomat, counselor, honest broker,

or change agent when that was necessary. On the board

and in the School, Jack was an astute listener, and always

promoted the broadest possible understanding of an issue.

Co-chair of the search for Head of School Todd Bland, Jack

implemented a process that stands as an example of open,

responsive communication with the full Milton constituency.

Milton is extremely grateful for Jack’s seemingly limitless

service over 22 years, helping Milton to be both daring and

true, always; he has prepared Milton well for the future.

“Jack’s service to Milton has been vast, deep and meaningful.

He epitomizes the life and spirit of Dare to be True.”

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o n c e n t r e , c o n t .

Randall L. Kennedy Shares His Thoughts on Race Relations in America

favoritism and has done too little to educate

the public on the hazards that blacks face.”

“Beneath the malaise is a deep current of

racial pessimism that has a long history in

American and African-American thought,” said

Mr. Kennedy. “Pessimists believe that racial

harmony predicated on fairness is not part of

the American future. They posit that America

will not overcome its tragic racial past.”

Professor Kennedy made clear that he is

an optimist while stressing that “intentional,

invidious racial discrimination constitutes a

force in American life that is far from negligible.

It is a substantial headwind that blacks and

other racial minorities face in many key areas,

including housing, finance, employment,

criminal justice, electoral politics, and markets

for romance and marriage.”

Professor Kennedy said he is hopeful of the

“prominent trajectory” of African Americans.

Milton’s 48th War Memorial speaker, Professor

Randall L. Kennedy, told students, alumni

and parents that despite “a chasm that

separates the circumstances in which whites

and blacks typically find themselves,” he

is still an optimist about race relations in the

United States. Professor Kennedy is the

Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law

School, where he teaches in the fields of

criminal law, contracts, and the regulation

of race relations. In September, Professor

Kennedy continued an important Milton

tradition that brings to campus public figures

who discuss core social and political issues.

Although the election of President Barack

Obama was an amazing and pinnacle moment

for America, Mr. Kennedy said many African

Americans were deeply affected by the economic

downturn and believe President Obama has

“been too fearful of being charged with racial

He cited numerous statistics and laws that

traced the long, slow path of blacks from

an oppressed group of four million slaves in

1860 through the civil rights era to the election

of the first African-American president.

“Changes in public attitudes, law and custom

have clearly elevated the fortunes of African

Americans as individuals and black America as

a collectivity,” said Professor Kennedy. “Hard

facts may give plausibility to the pessimistic

tradition, but they make the optimistic tradition

compelling. Despite the many wrongs that

remain to be righted, blacks in America

confront fewer racist impediments now than

ever before in the history of the United States.”

The War Memorial Lecture was established

in 1922 to honor those Milton graduates who

gave their lives in World War I, and the

foundation brings to campus notable guests

who have dedicated their careers to the

responsibilities and opportunities connected

to leadership in a democracy.

Professor Kennedy was born in Columbia,

South Carolina, in 1954. He attended St. Albans

School, Princeton University, Oxford

University, and Yale Law School. He served

as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of

the United States Court of Appeals and for

Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States

Supreme Court. He is a member of the bar of

the District of Columbia and the Supreme

Court of the United States. Awarded the 1998

Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime,

and the Law, Professor Kennedy writes for

a wide range of scholarly and general-interest

publications. His most recent books are For

Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the

Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line:

Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011),

and Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008).

A member of the American Law Institute,

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

and the American Philosophical Association,

Mr. Kennedy is also a Charter Trustee of

Princeton University.

45s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

With chanting fans packing the ACC, the atmosphere was electric as the

girls’ volleyball team faced off against Nobles and Greenough in the final

game of their regular season. The Mustangs blocked and spiked their

way to a thrilling 3–0 victory. With only two losses to ISL teams this

season, this win clinched the league championship title and earned the

team a spot in the New England playoffs.

“For that hour and a half, the girls were rock stars out there,” says

Derek Palmore, varsity coach and Middle School faculty member. Last

year the team finished strong, but this season surpassed all expectations.

“The girls sustained such high-level play this season,” says Coach

Palmore. “As a team, they had incredible turnaround and recovery time.

So if we found ourselves down a few points or lost a match, the team did

a great job moving forward quickly.”

This marks the first time in more than a decade that the team has

made the playoffs. Though they fell to Phillips Andover in the first round,

captain Marina fleites ’15 credits both Coach Palmore and Assistant

Coach Fang Yuan with bringing the players up to their A game.

“In practices, we would split up,” she says. “Defense players went

with Coach Fang, because that is his specialty. Coach Palmore focused

on offense. This way we worked on a lot more technique, got specific

feedback, and then brought it all together as a team.”

Most players pick up the

sport in high school, because

volleyball programs are not

as entrenched in New England

as they are in warmer parts

of the country. Marina is the

most seasoned veteran on

the team, playing since her

freshman year.

“I’m so excited we made

post-season,” says Marina.

“I remember as a freshman

looking up at the banners

hanging in the ACC, and

all I wanted was a banner

for volleyball. And now we

have one! I am so proud of

the team. Everyone played

amazingly well against

Nobles, and the energy of

the crowd certainly helped.”

Volleyball Earns ISL Title in Record Season

neekon Vafa ’15 and harry Kwon ’15 took their computer program-

ming skills to a whole new level when they participated in — and

placed first at — MIT’s Internet of Things Hackathon in October.

A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers and

software developers collaborate intensively on software projects.

“The spirit of a hackathon isn’t competitive,” says Harry. “Every-

one goes there to learn, even the most experienced programmers.”

Most of the attendees are working professionals; Neekon and

Harry were the only high school students participating. Last

summer, Neekon added his name to MIT’s waitlist after researching

various hackathons. The night before the two-day event, Neekon

received word that he was in, with a couple of extra tickets included.

The event kicked off with team leaders pitching their projects.

Participants then chose which team they wanted to join. Neekon

and Harry picked the “Perfect Playlist” project, which involved

programming dynamically adjusting playlists that use sensors to

read the atmosphere of the room. For example, at a house party, the

sensors might pick up that it’s time to play a dance song.

“Although we were younger than the other team members, we

both understood what they understood and what they were saying,”

says Neekon. “We also contributed our own ideas and felt very

comfortable as part of the team.” Harry and Neekon are both taking

Mr. Hales’s Programming Applications class this semester.

When work was complete, each team presented its project to

the judges. Neekon and Harry’s team was awarded first prize. The

prize included tickets to the main Internet of Things conference

the following week, which Neekon and Harry attended for one day.

“We learned a lot of actual programming and engineering at the

hackathon,” says Harry. “The event also gave us an idea of what

real software engineering is like. Now I see how the whole process

works, from designing and building the product to working

efficiently as a team.”

Among College Students and Professionals, Milton Seniors Win First Prize at MIT’s Hackathon

46 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

Dr. Eyster Fuses Biology and Art as She “Looks Closely”

o n c e n t r e , c o n t .

Linde Eyster enjoys looking closely at things — as a scientist,

as a teacher, and as a photographer. For the past few years,

she focused on the natural environment in her backyard

garden, photographing a range of organisms with a macro

lens. The result was a stunning, colorful collection that was

on exhibition in Pieh Commons in October.

“I wanted the photos to tell biological stories,” says Linde,

who has taught a variety of life science courses at Milton

since 1990. “So, you’re not just looking at a photo of two ants.

You are looking at a biological process. The ants are on a

stem guiding the tiny aphids up and down, because the ants

are dependent on the aphids for their nourishment.”

Linde shot all the images outside in natural light, with

the subjects in their usual patterns and environment.

The plan grew out of a cross-curricular biodiversity project

she assigned her Advanced Biology students, who were

required to find and photograph a dozen different inverte-

brates on campus or near their homes.

“I did the assignment myself to estimate how long it would

take to accomplish, and the project reawakened my love

of photographing little things,” says Linde. “Even without

a camera in hand, I love the surprises of looking closely in

the leaves and stems in my small garden, where I witness

both amazing organisms and fascinating animal behaviors.”

Linde’s friend and fellow faculty member Bryan Cheney —

a photographer and member of the visual arts department —

answered her photography questions and helped her sort

through hundreds of photos to select the ones to exhibit.

Linde’s interest in photography began as a child, when

she occasionally converted the bathroom into a darkroom

to develop her prints. For research toward her master’s

degree, she took her first close-up photographs to document

the colors of nudibranchs (sea slugs), which fade quickly

when the organisms are placed into preservatives. During

her doctoral research on embryonic shell formation at

Northeastern University, she spent many hours photo-

graphing subcellular structures with transmission electron

microscopes, followed by hours of printing thousands of

black-and-white images of cells and cell parts. Many of these

images were published in her scientific papers.

“Without realizing it, I was learning skills through my

microscope photography, such as composing the shot,

finding the right angle, and cropping to focus on the elements

you want,” says Linde.

47s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

A Tricycle Rides Back to Milton

A new art installation hanging from the rafters in the Art

and Media Center completes a circle that began with two

inquisitive students in the late 1970s. david rabkin ’79 and

Justin aborn ’79 were in their junior year when they built

a large, recumbent tricycle called the “A-Rab.”

“Both of us were fiddlers,” says David, who is now the

Farinon Director for Current Science and Technology at the

Museum of Science in Boston. “We liked building, and we

were always taking stuff apart and putting it back together

again. The idea of the trike came about because we really

wanted to learn how to weld. Welding is one of the great

crafts, being able to work with metal and bond it in a way

to make it really strong.”

They approached Michael Bentinck-Smith, who was the

woodworking teacher in the Lower School at the time. He

agreed to teach them to weld, but to count the work as an

independent project they needed a solid idea and design.

“Something that went fast with wheels made sense to our

adolescent minds,” says David. “We decided that a human-

powered vehicle would be much more elegant, so the design

grew from that idea. Back then, you could go to the dump

and find building materials. So much of the trike came

from the old Milton dump!”

After 1,000 man-hours during the winter, the trike was

ready to ride that spring. ian torney ’82, chair of the visual

arts department, says he remembers David and Justin riding

the trike around campus. After they graduated, the trike sat

in David’s mother’s garage until 1997, when they extensively

refurbished it for an arts festival. This time it was stored

more carefully, so when they took it out of the garage in 2013

to hang in the AMC, it was in much better shape.

“Seeing the trike hanging in the AMC is very satisfying,”

says David. “It does my own and Justin’s heart good to

know that it’s somewhere other people will enjoy it. It’s an

interesting form. From where it is hung, you get to look at

it from all angles; it looks different from various directions,

and you can appreciate a whole other dimension of it. Milton

students are so bright and motivated, so if even a little

inspiration is derived from looking at it, and that leads

somewhere interesting, that is great. If it opens a door and

shakes up someone’s mental model of something they

were thinking about, then we’ve achieved our mission.”

48 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy48

Every Wednesday morning, I look forward to

sitting around the Harkness table with the

14 students in my section of Senior Transitions.

This course is designed to help Class I students

manage the complexities of senior year and

the college admission process, and focus on

how to make a smooth and healthy transition

from high school to college. Senior Transitions

is one of four courses in Milton’s Affective

Education program that all students take over

their Milton years.

During this year, we focus explicitly on life

questions: What makes you happy? What does

success look like? Who are you now, and who do

you want to become? How does a person lead a

good life? These foundational questions, and the

answers they prompt, set a context that enables

students to make the most of their final year

at Milton, of college, and of the world beyond.

Milton students set high expectations for

themselves. The same great qualities that

brought them to Milton — intellectual curiosity,

self-motivation, focus on a passion — can make

them particularly vulnerable when realities

alter the plan they had envisioned. Sometimes

without even knowing it, young people define

success by a set of external criteria, and find

themselves living lives that they are “supposed

to” live, rather than lives they choose.

I am a planner. I believe in setting goals

and creating plans to help you realize those

goals. I also believe in pausing regularly,

to assess, to make sure my goals and plans

align with my priorities. Life invariably

interrupts even the best-laid plans. Falling

in love with my wife at age 18; taking on a job

for which I felt woefully under-qualified;

having three children in 14 months. My life

h e a d o f s c h o o l

“Leave Room to Be Surprised”by Todd B. Bland

was irrevocably changed by these events.

And I am grateful every day for the friends

and mentors who helped me alter my plans

and realign myself with a new — exciting,

terrifying — set of circumstances.

My students are often subjected to my many

“best” pieces of advice. But this one is a gem:

Be open to plans that evolve over time. Life

comes at you fast, and often you do not know

what you know, until you know it. Moving

from failure to success; despair to fulfillment;

financially strapped to financially capable;

illness to health: Navigating those transitions

takes grit, courage, flexibility, resilience, and

striking out into unknown territory. So many

Milton graduates I have met and admire have

traveled these pathways.

In his commencement speech to Milton’s

Class of 2011, author Reif Larsen ’98 said, “We

like plans. But don’t plan too hard. Leave

room to be surprised.” I am proud to be part

of a School that prepares students to follow

paths that they have determined — that helps

develop confidence, and courage, and creativity,

that helps young people pursue their passions

and find authentic, meaningful success, and

fulfillment. Our graduates show us, again and

again, that Milton fosters and supports this

thoughtful way of leading a life.

Debby IrvingActivist and author Debby Irving talked with students

about what she explained as an epidemic of “white silence.”

Ms. Irving, this year’s Multiculturalism and Community

Development Speaker, said that when it comes to racism

in the United States, white people must be part of “cross-

racial conversations” in order to make progress on racial

divisions and injustices. A graduate of the Winsor School

in Boston, Ms. Irving holds a bachelor’s degree from

Kenyon College and an M.B.A.

from Simmons College. She is

the author of Waking Up White.

“We are all connected, but we are damaged, and we need to repair that damage.”

m e s s a g e s

Jennifer Finney BoylanWhat does it mean to be transgender? What is gender identity? This

year’s Talbot Speaker, Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, answered

these questions for students and faculty, with charm, personal anecdotes,

and compassionate advice. Professor Boylan is the inaugural Anna

Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College and the author of

She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

“The question is not how you go from being a man to a woman, or a woman to a man. The real question is: How do you live an authentic life? How do you be you, out in the world? That well-intentioned advice, ‘just be yourself,’ can be the most diffi cult advice to follow.”

in the United States, white people must be part of “cross-

racial conversations” in order to make progress on racial

divisions and injustices. A graduate of the Winsor School

in Boston, Ms. Irving holds a bachelor’s degree from

Kenyon College and an M.B.A.

from Simmons College. She is

the author of Waking Up White.

“We are all connected, but we are damaged, and we need to repair that damage.”

Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College and the author of

She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

“The question is not how you go from being a man to a woman, or a woman to a man. The real question is: How do you live an authentic life? How do you be you, out in the world? That well-intentioned advice, ‘just be yourself,’ can be the most diffi cult advice to follow.”

50

Donald JohnsonDr. Donald Johnson — English professor and

poet in residence at East Tennessee State

University — was last fall’s Bingham Visiting

Reader. In honor of Veterans Day, Dr. Johnson began his

reading with two poems about soldiers and war. The first,

“The Sergeant,” was inspired by his father, a World War II

veteran who later commanded a squad of the Honor Guard

that traveled through West Virginia. The second poem

he read, titled “Point Lookout, Maryland,” recalled the

American Civil War. An avid sports fan and accomplished

sportswriter, Dr. Johnson served for 16 years as general

editor of Aethlon: Journal of Sports Literature. His most recent

book of poetry is More Than Heavy Rain.

When others mustered out in ’46, you soldiered on, commanding a squad that buried the box after narrow box the Army sent home from abroad.

For a year the wind off the Kasserine,peasants muddled to their knees on Mindanao and oceans being oceans all over the world kept turning up dead West Virginians. — From “the Sergeant”

Blake GilpinThis year’s Henry R. Heyburn ’39 Speaker

in History, Professor Blake Gilpin, used

his expertise on the 1850s abolitionist John

Brown to illustrate how the narratives

of history are created: by combining fact,

perspective, and sometimes imagination.

Dr. Gilpin, a professor of history at Tulane

University, has spent a decade studying

John Brown and the cultural phenomena

surrounding the man and his legend. His

book John Brown Still Lives!: America’s Long Reckoning

with Violence, Equality, and Change was a finalist for

Gilder Lehrman Center’s Frederick Douglass Book Prize.

Dr. Gilpin earned his Ph.D. from Yale University.

“you are all historians, the moment you learn two facts and link them together, creating a narrative. Our history actually tells us more about who we are today than about people in the past. And that’s okay. We need that narrative, that context, to make sense of who we are, and where we are, now.”

Anand GiridharadasJournalist Anand Giridharadas had an “almost American

life” growing up. Born in Ohio, the son of Indian

immigrants, he shared with students the story of what

led him to live in India for six years. A New York Times

columnist and the author of India Calling: An Intimate

Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking, Mr. Giridharadas was this

year’s Hong Kong Distinguished Lecturer.

“the country I grew up with in my mind was giving way to a different India. It was a revolution from within . . . the changes had to do with people revolting against parents

who told them they would be a doctor or a lawyer, or who they would marry . . . you had millions of people starting to say to themselves that destiny is what you make it.”

m e s s a g e s , c o n t .

51s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

Maysoon ZayidMaysoon Zayid — comedian, actress and activist — was the

2015 Margaret A. Johnson Speaker. Born with cerebral

palsy, Ms. Zayid is a powerful advocate for the disabled.

She told stories about growing up in New Jersey, where

she was accepted for who she was. But as a theater major

in college and a struggling actress pursuing a career, Ms.

Zayid realized that disabled people were almost nonexistent

in the entertainment industry. She has appeared on

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” Comedy Central, PBS,

CNN, HBO, MTV, ABC and Huffington Post Live. She is a

recurring columnist at The Daily Beast and was a speaker at

TEDWomen 2013. She is the founder of Maysoon’s Kids, an

education and wellness program for disabled and wounded

Palestinian refugee children.

“the world is broken, but together we can fix it. Including people is important not because we have to, but because it makes for a better world. Don’t let other people define you. Clap for yourself, and other people will join you.”

Michael A. McKennaMike McKenna, network manager of Milton’s Academy

Technology Services department, delivered this year’s

Veterans Day assembly speech to students as a proud and

accomplished veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

Growing up in Manville, Rhode Island — home to the

country’s first World War I monument — he knew and

admired many American veterans. Enlisting at age 19,

Mr. McKenna spent ten years as a U.S. Marine.

“the military can provide you with invaluable experiences: an education, leadership opportunities, problem-solving and planning skills, just to name a few. In the military there’s a Plan A, Plan b and Plan C. We plan for everything, because no matter how much planning you do, Murphy (as in Murphy’s law) will always pay you a visit.”

Junot DíazPulitzer Prize–winning author Junot Díaz spoke with students

not only as a creative writer, but also as a Dominican American

immigrant and an activist. Hosted by Milton’s student Latino

Association, Mr. Díaz answered questions from a packed room

of students, on topics ranging from the writing process to the

response to Ferguson, from gender equity to immigration. Mr.

Díaz is the author of several books, including The Brief Wondrous

Life of Oscar Wao, for which he earned the Pulitzer Prize for

Fiction in 2008. He is a creative writing professor at MIT and

the fiction editor of Boston Review.

“When your teachers tell you to ‘write what you know,’ they are teaching you to scale things correctly. In other words, if you can’t draw a cup, it’s going to be hard to draw a battle station. until you can accurately describe your own world, it’s probably going to be difficult for you to describe someone else’s.”

52

a l u m n i a u t h o r s

the Season of Migration: A Novelby nellie Hermann ’96Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 2015

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most popular

painters of all time, and yet we know very

little about the difficult period in his youth

when he and his brother, Theo, broke off

all contact. In The Season of Migration, Nellie

Hermann conjures a profoundly imaginative,

original and heartbreaking vision of Van

Gogh’s early years. In startlingly beautiful

and powerful language, Hermann transforms

our understanding of Van Gogh and the

redemptive power of art.

nellie Hermann was born in Boston and lives in Brooklyn, new York. Her first novel, The Cure for Grief, was published in 2009. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University and has taught and lectured widely on the use of creativity in non-traditional contexts.

the big trip: A Family gap yearby Martha McManamy ’75Lulu Publishing, July 2014

Taking a year off from the “rat race” is an idle

dream for many, but the McManamy family —

including their three teenagers — decided to

make it happen. The Big Trip: A Family Gap Year

tells how they put high school, college and

work on hold while they learned Spanish

in Spain and volunteered in Bolivia, Guatemala

and Kenya. Choosing home stays and local

transportation over hotels and rental cars, they

undertook a deeply immersive journey of

“slow travel,” living simply, and experiencing

life as the locals do. A vivid account full of

adventures and lively observations, the story

also offers a template for anyone yearning

to undertake an intellectual, emotional and

spiritual journey of discovery.

Martha McManamy is a multi-lingual, Quaker activist with a serious travel bug and a desire to make a difference. She lives with her husband and children in newburyport, Massachusetts.

Out of left Fieldby Liza Ketchum ’64Untreed Reads, July 2014

The summer of 2004 is full of promise for

Brandon McGinnis. He has a job, a spot on the

varsity swim team, loving parents, and loyal

friends. Brandon and his dad, ardent Red Sox

fans, wonder: Could this be the year the Sox

finally win the World Series? Then Brandon’s

father dies suddenly. His will, signed just

before his death, reveals a secret kept for 30

years. As shadows of the Vietnam War bleed

into the escalating war in Iraq, Brandon sets

out to solve the mystery his father left behind.

His journey takes him to Canada’s Cape Breton

Island, where he uncovers the bittersweet

truths about the past, and a family facing its

own hidden demons. Brandon’s courageous

search throws him into life’s game, with its

devastating losses, unexpected curve balls,

and thrills as wondrous as a home run on an

autumn night.

Liza Ketchum is the author of 15 books for young people, including Where the Great Hawk Flies, winner of the 2006 Massachusetts Book Award for Children’s Litera- ture. Liza is on the faculty of the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University. She divides her time between Massachusetts and Vermont.

M I lt O N M A G A z I n E    

53s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

the Social Profit Handbook: the Essential guide to Setting goals, Assessing Outcomes, and Achieving Success for Mission-Driven Organizationsby David Grant, former facultyChelsea Green Publishing, Spring 2015

People working in non-profit organizations

can and will lead us out of our world’s

“mess,” David Grant believes, but to achieve

that, they have to change the way they

think about assessment — measuring their

success. To begin with, David argues for a

shift in vocabulary. We are familiar with

organizations that create or preserve financial

profit; the groups that give us access to

medical care, art and music, clean rivers,

high-functioning public transportation or

that empower young people should be called

social profit organizations. Social profit

organizations have to define the outcomes

that people they seek to help actually need

Veteran of Two World Wars: Charles Davis Morgan, Class of 1902

A memoir about a Milton graduate who fought in both World Wars arrived in Mr. Frank Millet’s hands this fall. The author, Dick Morgan ’46, remembers fondly Mr. Millet’s role during his Milton years. Mr. Millet delivered Dick to the ship in new York that would reunite him with his father in England. Dick had not seen his father for six years; during four of those years, his father was a prisoner of war.

“I believe that the enclosed manuscript can be of interest to you,” Dick writes, “as it is largely based on the correspondence of one of Milton’s most outstanding graduates, my father, who fought both World Wars in the British army, thus twice losing his American citizenship.

and value. To create and capture social profit,

David argues, you need both quantitative

and qualitative measures, both numbers and

assessment of things that can’t be expressed

in numbers. In his newly published handbook,

David “shows how to measure success in a

way that helps you achieve it, illustrated by

examples of organizations that have done

exactly that.” Those who lead, govern and

support non-profit organizations can learn

about formative assessment in The Social Profit

Handbook — assessment practices that will

improve future work rather than merely judge

past performance.

During the first he was wounded three times, badly gassed, and was decorated for valor by King George V. During the second war, while in his late fifties and suffering from the effects of the previous war’s wounds, he spent four years as a POW in Germany and died shortly after. . . . He was a highly courageous, literate, sensitive man.”

Dick completed the memoir “One Family — Two Wars,” as an 86-year-old, for the benefit of his children, grandchildren, and other interested family and friends. Remembering the important role that Milton played in his father’s life, he made sure that Mr. Millet was able to read it.

David Grant, former Milton English department faculty member, and his wife, nancy Grant, a co-founder of Milton’s Mountain School Program, have developed this handbook for mission-driven organizations. David’s career has centered on innovative teaching and learning; he served as president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in Morristown, new Jersey. He now consults with organizations around the world that have a social or educational mission.

54 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E      milton.edu     facebook.com/MiltonAcademy1798    @MiltonAcademy

NAME:

ClASS OF:

ONE MIltON MEMOry:

OCCuPAtION:

PASSIONS:

HOW MIltON PlAyED A rOlE IN My lIFE:

MIltON tODAy IS:

WHy DO I gIvE bACK:

I CHOSE A PlANNED gIFt bECAuSE:

For information on gift planning, contact Suzie Hurd Greenup ’75 at suzie_greenup@milton.edu or 617-898-2376.

55s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

gregory Jacobson ’78 hosted the second annual “The Jake” best ball golf

tournament.

▲ tare Newbury, Josh lane and

the late Hale Sturges learned

at their 50th Reunion that they

were distant cousins, united by

the “Ware” name. Since then, they

have held reunions in New York,

Maine and Massachusetts. This

picture was taken at their most

recent gathering at Tare’s house

over the summer. Hale passed

away just weeks later.

1942 In December, Henry Moulton

lunched with John Carey and

John’s wife, Pat, at the Grand

Central Oyster Bar in New York

City. John is a columnist for

The Rye City Review; his column

is called “A Rye Oldtimer.” He

brought with him a recent column,

which mentioned his football

days as captain of Milton’s team.

1956▼ Ernesto Macaya Ortiz

and his wife, roberta Hayes Macaya Ortiz, celebrated their

son, Roman, who was made

ambassador to the United States

from Costa Rica. Ernesto and

roberta are pictured with

President Barack Obama, Roman

Macaya Hayes, and Roman’s wife

and children.

1966tom turner’s first book, Palm

Beach Nasty, was published

in January. The crime novel

has attracted the attention of a

Hollywood production company

interested in making the book into

a movie. Tom is also working on a

screenplay called Underwater. Tom

lives in Charleston, South Carolina,

and would love to connect with

local Milton classmates.

1978On September 29, 2014, gregory Jacobson hosted the second

annual “The Jake” best ball

golf tournament for men and

women in support of the National

Multiple Sclerosis Society. The

event was held at the Salem Golf

Club in North Salem, New York.

1988Dr. Curt Cetrulo recently

dedicated a scientific article to

longtime Milton faculty member

Mr. Frank Millet. In the article,

Curt cites Mr. Millet’s influence

on his pursuing a career of

caring for burn-injured patients.

Curt’s research on the subject

was awarded Best Poster at

c l a s s n o t e s

tom turner ’66 published his first book,

Palm Beach Nasty, in January.

56 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E

c l a s s n o t e s , c o n t .

1996Steve lehman earned the top spot

in the 2014 NPR Music Jazz Critics

Poll — Jazz Album of the Year — for

his album Mise En Abîme.

1997▼ On September 16, 2014, James Meeks and his wife, Jennifer,

welcomed Adam Thomas Meeks

into the world. He was born

in Grand Rapids, Michigan,

weighing 9 pounds and 14 ounces.

1994▲ laura beatrix Newmark

welcomed the birth of her son,

Milo Liev Zaklad, on November 13,

2014. First son Elias is adjusting

well to his role as older brother

to “Mellow Milo.” Laura says she

is tired, but enjoying her family

of four.

▼ Old friends Mollie Nelson Webster and lily Davis ’97 enjoy

beach time in Little Compton,

Rhode Island.

the meeting of the American

Association of Plastic Surgeons in

June 2014.

Alejandro “Ali” Danois was

named a finalist for the 2014

Salute to Excellence Award by

the National Association of Black

Journalists for his article “New

Jersey Drive,” featured in the

November 2013 issue of Ebony

magazine. Ali recounts the story

of George Briscoe of Newark,

New Jersey, who set out to help

his son, Isaiah Briscoe, reach his

NBA dreams against the back-

drop of high-stakes recruiting

wars between major collegiate

programs over middle- and high-

school athletes. Ali is a senior

writer and editor with The Shadow

League and co-host of WEAA’s

Blacktop Xchange Sports Report.

1991James Matthew Chamberlain,

who attended Milton’s Lower

School, passed away on

November 10, 2014. Formerly

from Milton, Hingham and

Scituate, Massachusetts, he spent

his career as a renowned chef

initially in the Boston area and

for the past 15 years in Sarasota

and the Charlotte County areas

of Florida.

1993Jessica McDaniel is a baby

photographer who has been

running Boston Baby Photos for

11 years. She lives in Milton.

Steve lehman ’96 earned the top spot in the 2014 nPR Music Jazz Critics Poll for

Jazz Album of the Year.

57s p r i n g 2 0 1 5

▲ trustee Erick tseng married

Rachel Lee on July 26, 2014. The

ceremony was held at Campovida

Vineyard in California wine

country. The entire weekend was

one massive party, including an

Indian baraat procession. From

Milton Academy, sister Anita tseng Shaw ’99 and honorary

cousin Janet lin were there to

help the happy couple celebrate

their special day.

1998▼ lindsay lowder and Milton

friends lydon vonnegut,

Sarah Mcginty london and

Nia Hays got together with their

babies and toddlers for a photo

shoot with Lindsay’s sister,

Jessica Haynes McDaniel ’93,

a local photographer. Lydon’s

daughter Janie, Lindsay’s

daughter Josie, Sarah’s son

Mac, and Nia’s son Gus were

all smiles.

2000Ashley Carter was married over

Labor Day Weekend to Phillip

Draviam.

2004Parker rider-longmaid was

named a 2015 Bristow Fellow,

earning a one-year fellowship

in the U.S. Solicitor General’s

Office to work on cases pending

before the Supreme Court. The

fellowship is awarded to recent

law school graduates with

outstanding academic records

and top clerkships.

Parker rider-longmaid ’04 was named a 2015 Bristow Fellow, earning a one-year

fellowship in the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office.

58 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E

c l a s s n o t e s , c o n t .

2012James McHugh, musical director

of the Vanderbilt Melodores,

helped the a cappella group place

first in the holiday edition of

NBC’s hit singing competition

show, “The Sing-Off.” On the

show, the Melodores wowed the

judges with their renditions of

Jason Derulo’s “Trumpets” and

Hozier’s “Take Me To Church.”

2013Ellen Sukharevsky contributed

to the recently published The

Boarding School Survival Guide,

a book written for students

by students. Ellen’s piece, “Day

Students: Finding Your Place,”

is one of several chapters in this

unique guide that is designed

to help students navigate life at

boarding school.

2005▲ liz O’Neill and John Dennison

were married in Apthorp

Chapel on September 20, 2014.

Longtime O’Neill family friend,

Rev. Scotty McLennan, parent

to Will Mclennan ’00 and Dan Mclennan ’03, officiated the

ceremony. Malcolm thayer Dennison was best man and Kate O’Neill ’00 was maid of honor.

Liz and John are the second

Milton Academy marriage in the

Dennison family, the first being

John’s maternal grandmother and

grandfather, Jane and Malcolm

Mackenzie, who met fighting

over an alumni bulletin at Jane’s

nursing station at Columbia

Presbyterian. The reception was

held at the MIT Endicott House

in Dedham, Massachusetts.

James McHugh ’12 helped the Vanderbilt

Melodores a cappella group place first in the holiday edition of nBC’s hit singing competition

show, “The Sing-Off.”

59S P r I N g 2 0 1 5

DeceasedClass of 1928barbara Wendell Kerr

Class of 1940Alice Hurd Moulton

Class of 1941the reverend Augustus l. Hemenway Corinne Kernan Sevigny

Class of 1942Ernest H. gunther

Class of 1943Anne Sage SaxtonAnne Putnam Seamans

Class of 1945Peter N. toulmin

Class of 1949Charles robinson

Class of 1950Hugh P. Chandler

Class of 1954gunther E. Fritze

Class of 1955Albert J. Scullin

Class of 1956Hale Sturges II

Class of 1957 Kenneth W. gregg

Class of 1971 Sara J. McCarthy

Class of 1976Jonathan A. Spound

Former FacultyWilliam M. Moore

To read the obituaries of

deceased alumni, you

can log in to Milton’s

alumni web pages and visit:

alumni.milton.edu/alumni-deceased

2014▼ Eighteen years after Emily bland and Maggie bland were

born two months prematurely

and spent the first six weeks of

their lives at Mount Auburn

Hospital, the twins returned to

the hospital in a different capacity.

Emily and Maggie delivered

to the newborns caps that they

knitted as part of their senior

service project, “as a way to give

back to the wonderful community

that gave us the chance to live

the healthy lives we do today.”

The caps were purple in honor

of November’s Shaken Baby

Awareness month.

▲ Milton pulled off a 1–0 win in

the 33rd annual Milton–Nobles

alumni soccer game against a

Nobles squad at least twice as

numerous. Milton’s record in the

alumni matchup is 14–11–6 with

two cancellations (hurricane and

snow!). Front (L to R): Chris robertson ’83, Zac trudeau ’05,

Doug Sibor ’05, Max Hoffman ’05,

Dan Sibor ’01, Eric Pascavage ’01.

Back (L to R): trevor Prophet ’07,

Colby tucker ’05, Mike Chao ’08,

Matt Enright ’05, Chris trakas ’77,

Seth reynolds ’90, ted Hays ’70.

60 M I lt O N M A G A z I n E    

Martha Rose Shulman ’68 is a cookbook author and writes Recipes for Health for the New York Times.

When I graduated from Milton Academy in 1968, I did not

look back. I kept in touch with close friends and a few of

my teachers, and I visited the school once, but I never went

to a class reunion and I never donated. Nor did my sister

(Class of 1967). I always appreciated the amazing education

I got at Milton, especially because I didn’t go on to lead a

conventional life, and I’ve always believed that my Milton

education gave me the intellectual confidence to do that.

But I do not have fond memories of my time there.

So I am more surprised than anyone that I am now a

Milton parent and thrilled to be one. This is not because

I have changed; it’s because the School has changed. The

Milton Academy that my son goes to is not the Milton

Academy that I went to in the ’60s.

That School was not kind, and it certainly was not

fun. Nor was it diverse, by any stretch. It was an enclave of

WASPs; it made me more aware that I was Jewish than I had

ever been in my life. When I first arrived at Milton I was a

fish out of water. That first week I shook during classes, my

hands sweat, and I had a lump in my throat. I know this still

happens to students who suddenly find themselves out of the

little pond where they had always been the smartest, but at

the time this feeling had more to do with the fact that Milton

was not nurturing in any way. It was sink or swim.

Driven survivor that I am, I swam, willing my teachers to

love me, becoming an enthusiastic hockey goalie, and work-

ing so hard that the headmistress, Miss Johnson, expressed

concern to my parents. Making friends was easy, but I never

developed any passion for the place. Few of us did.

Decades later I was surprised to hear from two of my

closest, coolest friends in L.A. that their daughter, Tess, had

decided to go to boarding school and had chosen Milton.

She had a wonderful time, and when they told me what the

place was like, I could tell that things had changed since my

Milton days.

Private school for my own son had never been on my

mind. It was not a financial possibility for me, and Liam

was getting a good enough education in the magnet public

schools he attended in Los Angeles. But by eighth grade

he was bored, and one day he told me he wanted to go to

boarding school.

I told him to research several East Coast and California

schools online. “If you get in, and if you get financial aid,

then I’m all for it.” Both of those things happened.

In April 2013, Liam and I went to Milton’s revisit day.

My sister came, too. It was the first time we had set foot on

campus since 1968. We were flabbergasted by the different

world we walked into that day. We were not surprised by

the excellent education. The beautiful, new facilities were

also not unexpected, nor that the place was now thoroughly

co-ed. But everything else was different. Life at Milton

seemed balanced. The administration and teachers seemed

to really care about the total well-being of the students, and

the students looked happy! The faculty and administration

looked happy too, and both the faculty and student body

were diverse.

What changed? We cornered Mr. Ball after a presentation

and asked him. He seemed to know exactly what we were

referring to, and said that the changes had begun to take hold

in the 1990s. “We knew that we had to change if we were

going to survive as a school,” he told us. And so they did.

The gamble Milton Academy took on Liam is paying off

both for Liam and for Milton. Which is why now, to my great

surprise, I find myself to be one of Milton’s biggest boosters.

One way I can give back is to reach out to my contemporaries,

who, like me, may not have the best memories of Milton. Look

again; go and visit; check out the website. You will smile

and shake your heads in disbelief. I hope you’ll be inspired

to give, so that more students can have the life-changing

opportunity that was so generously given to my son.

p o s t s c r i p t M A r t H A r O S E S H u l M A N ’ 6 8

A Kinder, Gentler Place: An Appeal to My Contemporaries

b o a r d o f t r u s t e e s

george AlexCohasset, Massachusetts

robert Azeke ’87new York, new York

bradley M. bloomPresidentWellesley, Massachusetts

bob Cunha ’83Milton, Massachusetts

Mark Denneen ’84Boston, Massachusetts

Elisabeth Donohue ’83Vice PresidentChicago, Illinois

randall Dunn ’83Chicago, Illinois

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52EmeritusChestnut Hill, Massachusetts

John b. Fitzgibbons ’87TreasurerBronxville, new York

Margaret Jewett greer ’47EmeritaChevy Chase, Maryland

Franklin W. Hobbs Iv ’65Emeritusnew York, new York

Harold W. Janeway ’54EmeritusWebster, new Hampshire

Claire Hughes Johnson ’90Menlo Park, California

Peter Kagan ’86new York, new York

Stephen lebovitzWeston, Massachusetts

yunli lou ’87Shanghai, China

Stuart MathewsVice PresidentWaban, Massachusetts

Chris McKownMilton, Massachusetts

Wendy Nicholson ’86Vice Presidentnew York, new York

Caterina Papoulias-SakellarisMilton, Massachusetts

H. Marshall Schwarz ’54Emeritusnew York, new York

Frederick g. Sykes ’65SecretaryRye, new York

Dune thorne ’94Lincoln, Massachusetts

Erick tseng ’97San Francisco, California

Kimberly vaughan ’92Boston, Massachusetts

Dorothy Altman Weber ’60Boston, Massachusetts

ted Wendell ’58Milton, Massachusetts

ronnell Wilson ’93Jersey City, new Jersey

v-Nee yeh ’77Hong Kong

Kevin yip ’83Hong Kong

Milton Magazine

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