The Lawrentian - Summer 2013

LawrentianTHE Summer 2013LawrentianTHE Summer 2013

Departments

2 From the head master

3 editor’s Note

4 1,000 Words�Lawrentians trip the light fantastic.

6 ��NeWs iN BrieF�A poetry plethora, an emancipation education, and O’Rourke gets rowing.

10 ��sports rouNdup�Spring sports stats.

14��oN the arts�Students find their artistic voice.

On the Cover: Head�Master�Elizabeth�Duffy�H'43.�Photograph�by�Michael�Branscom.

F e at u r e s

24��the spirit oF invention � The life and (alleged) afterlife of radio control pioneer

John Hammond Jr.

30��CoeDuCation reColleCtion� Alums from the first coeducational graduating class reflect

on a historic year.

36 DuFFy’s First DeCaDe�A look at how Liz Duffy masters headmastering.

20

TA K E T H I S J O B A N D L O V E I T

30

c O E D u c AT I O N R E c O L L E c T I O N

18 Cover to Cover�Bob Ryan ’64 berates his best.

20 How to Do everytHing (Part 6)�Amanda Ripley ’92 tells tales.

22 take tHis Job anD Love it�Paul Dry ’62 finds passion in publishing.

80 CaPtion tHis��Think you’re funny? Prove it and win a prize.

ALumNI

44 aLumni news

45 boarD bits �Trustee news in a nutshell.

47 CLass notes

10

S P O R T S R O u N D u P

In 2003, at my first School meeting, I shared a humorous, Top 10 list of reasons why I was excited to come to Lawrenceville. In reflecting on my first decade as Head Master, I offer a longer and more thoughtful chronological list of my favorite annual School events.

2 t h e l aw r e n t i a n

From�the�Head�Master9


The House Olympics: The infectious spirit of this opening days’ tradition reflects the centrality of the House system and sets a wonderful tone for the year.

The First Day of School: Since I was a child, the start of school has always felt like the true beginning of the year. Now, as a faculty member, I experience two “first days” each year – the first faculty meeting and the first day of classes.

Parents’ Weekend: Parents are delighted to dis-cover how well the faculty knows their children. They also get to witness some impressive student accomplishments such as the fall musical.

Hill Week: Our 125-year-old rivalry always lives up to its history, with a week of spirit-raising events followed by gripping Saturday competitions.

Lessons and Carols: Lawrenceville’s pluralistic religious life means that we celebrate a variety of religious holidays and sponsor many interfaith initiatives throughout the year; for me, this beau-tiful service on the eve of students’ leaving for winter break marks the beginning of the Christ-mas season.

MLK Day of Serivce: It’s inspiring to see the difference that more than 800 students and 100 faculty members can make on this “day on” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

Winter Saturday Afternoons in Lavino: The varied athletic competitions have captivated my children since they were small and provide en-ergy and excitement for all of us during the dark, cold days of winter.

Staff Professional Day: For the past few years, we’ve set aside a day for staff to return to the classroom as both teachers and students; we also recognize dozens of staff for their dedicated ser-vice to the School.

Head Master’s Day: A popular respite from our daily routine, this unexpected day off is particu-larly fun when it coincides with a large snow-storm.

Masters’ Awards: We specifically honor two retired faculty members for their excellent teach-ing and, more generally, salute all Lawrenceville faculty members for the difference they make in the classroom and beyond.

March Break: I used to dread the dreariness of March in New Jersey, but this two-week vacation is now a welcome end to the winter – particularly for those of us participating in School-sponsored trips around the world.

Spring at Lawrenceville: The campus is at its loveliest with waves of blossoming trees and blooming flowers, and the warm weather puts everyone in a good mood.

Spring Dance Concert: A cherished Law-renceville tradition, this extravaganza features both remarkable performances and an enthusias-tic, capacity crowd in the Kirby Arts Center.

Alumni Weekend: My favorite events over this packed weekend speak to the enduring loyalty of Lawrentians – the Service of Remembrance, the Fifth Form rosette pinning ceremony, and the Saturday night 50th reunion dinner in Abbott.

The Big Red Race: Now in its 10th year, this annual race is a fun, town-gown tradition that benefits the School Camp, a worthy cause and a cherished Lawrenceville institution.

Pre-Prom Party: This low-key yet glamor-ous event organized by the Parents’ Association marks the beginning of the weekend graduation ceremonies and the end of another school year.

Annual traditions like these, as well as the quality of everyone associated with the School – students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and parents – are what make Lawrenceville such a special and reward-ing place to lead. Thank you for entrusting my colleagues and me with maintaining and extending Lawrenceville’s legacy.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth A. Duffy H’43The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master

LawrentianTHE

publisher Jennifer Szwalek

editor Mike allegra

art director PhylliS lerner

proofreaders rob reinalda ’76

linda hlavacek Silver h’59 61 ’62 ’63 ’64 gP’06 ’08

Jean StePhenS h’50 ’59 ’61 ’64 ’68 ’89 gP’06 contributors weS brookS ’71 P'03 '05

liSa M. gillard hanSon

Jacqueline haun

carin MacnaMara

aaShna Mago ’13

aManda riPley ’92

Selena SMith

PaloMa torreS

nicole uliaSz

the lawrentian (uSPS #306-700) is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, and fall) by the lawrenceville School, P.o. box 6008, lawrenceville, nJ 08648, for alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends.

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the lawrentian welcomes letters from readers. Please send all correspondence to [email protected] or to the above address care of the lawrentian editor. letters may be edited for publication.

the lawrentian welcomes submissions and suggestions for magazine departments. if you have an idea for a feature story, please query first to the lawrentian editor via email ([email protected]).

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postmasterPlease send address corrections to:the lawrentianthe lawrenceville SchoolP.o. box 6008lawrenceville, nJ 08648

©the lawrenceville Schoollawrenceville, new Jersey

all rights reserved.

I was interviewed by a lot of people at Lawrenceville before I was handed the keys to The Lawrentian. As I sat down with one administrator after another, I fell into a pattern

of repeating myself. This was because, well, the questions they all asked me were pretty much the same. They were asked in different ways and in a different order, but they also all could be translated to mean, “So which one are you, again?” As anyone who has gone on interviews knows, this is not terribly unusual. The folks I was meeting with had perused résumés until their eyes glazed over. They had met a slew of candidates already – and they would meet another slew of candidates after I took my leave. Those sharply dressed applicants with firm handshakes and toothy smiles were going to blend into one another sooner or later. So with one interviewer after another, I recited my résumé and delivered a few chipper bon mots before being herded off to meet somebody else. The last person I met was Head Master Liz Duffy. That was when the interview process became a different ballgame. Liz didn’t offer up her own version of “So which one are you again?” Liz knew which one I was. She didn’t ask me to talk about my responsibilities at my last school, or when I was a newspaper reporter, or whatever. She knew my resume almost as well as I did. Instead, Liz wanted a story. She asked me, in effect, how a job at Lawrenceville would move me further down the path toward personal growth. The question delighted me. She wasn’t looking to see whether I was qualified for the job. She already knew I had the skill set she needed. Instead, she was checking to see if I was the type of person who would be happy at Lawrenceville. She wanted to see if I would be the type of person who would still be around to accept his 10-year pin. That was nine years ago. I still have a year to go to get that pin, but, yes, I am that type of person. Liz could see that. Liz makes dozens of significant decisions every day – that’s how all headmasters have to roll – but she also has one eye trained on the future, wondering how something she decides today might affect the School 10 or 20 years down the road. Having this forward-thinking view is not common. It’s a skill that separates leaders from mere managers. In this issue’s cover story, Duffy’s First Decade (page 36), we follow Lawrenceville’s 12th Head Master as she presides over meetings, helps students, and oversees projects that will influence Lawrentians for decades to come. As you’ll see, it’s a mammoth task. Considering just how busy her days really are, it is a wonder that she ever found the time to memorize the résumé of an aspiring Lawrentian editor. But she did, and I am grateful.

Warmest wishes,

Mike [email protected]

summer 2013 | Volume 77 number 3

From�the�Editor9

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 3

THE

Accompanied� by� music� that� ranged�

from� Rihanna� to� Rossini,� more� than�

100�student�dancers� took� to� the�Kirby�

Arts� Center� stage� for� Lawrenceville’s�

Spring�Dance�Concert.�The�show�often�

offered�up�something�unexpected;�case�

in�point:�James�Bond�fans�of�all�stripes�

could� appreciate� this� performance� set�

to�the�music�of�Dr.�No.�

Forms’Fancy

Footwork

1000�Words9


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an accidental Gluttoni always enjoy the lawrentian and this past issue was no exception. i do, however, take ex-ception to your use of “gourmand” in the feature “grade School gourmet: katy tull ’04” [spring 2013]. the story read, “it was ‘super-delicious’ one pint-size gourmand enthused.” a gourmand ranks quantity above quality. if this child liked the food, he might be a critic or an epicure but unless he over-indulged, he wasn’t a gourmand.

�Valerie�Nelson��’87�

more than music men “the Music Men” [“ask the archivist,” spring 2013] is very well done in both style and con-tent. it conveys to younger readers a sense of a musical tradition that, marginalized by fashions and upheavals of the 1960s, has faded from the School’s collective memory. the article conveys the impression that lawrenceville’s iconic songs were written by men. yet one of the most moving school songs was composed by a woman: Mabel havens hamilton (1887–1965). under the name “M.h. hamilton,” Mabel graces the lawrenceville Song book (1914 edition, and the 1921 update) as the composer of “old boy” and “Parting Song.” “Parting Song” was a rite of passage during the abbott and heely eras when, at each com-mencement, the entire fifth form sang all four verses (they were printed in the program). Mabel was the younger sister (and musical collaborator) of henry clay havens (1867–1946) who served on the lawrenceville faculty from 1895 until the mid-1930s as master of french, with intervals as master of german, head of the greek department, and the housemaster of wayside.

John�Stephan��’59�

music and meatless memories the latest lawrentian is the greatest rah-rah issue ever! congratulations on it, and congratu-lations to the School for deserving it. what a rich learning environment lawrenceville must now be! let me give you a quick idea of how far the School has come: food: in my day (1950-54) “sustainable fare” meant the minimum amount of low-quality fare that could be served to students and not have them starve. and, believe me, it was the mini-mum! i survived two years at kennedy house on starch: a nightly box of pretzels or saltine crack-ers. My third year at kennedy i discovered a little store where i could buy fresh ground-hamburger. i would buy a half a pound and sneak into the kitchen, cook it, and gobble it into my poor, protein-starved body. one of the most popular Periwig songs of the time was “no Seconds on the Meat” which memorialized the fact that, for second helpings, we settled for starchy gravy poured over a slice of white bread. Music: i am a life-long, totally dedicated, if only somewhat talented, player of jazz guitar. in the 1950s, there was no instruction at law-renceville to learn jazz guitar. i got around that problem when i discovered Johnny, a natural jazz guitarist and the assistant cook at kennedy. Johnny had pawned his guitar. i had a very nice Martin guitar at the time and set up a deal with Johnny for him to borrow my guitar to play gigs in exchange for lessons. i would sneak through the kitchen up to his room and get a lesson. our housemaster, Jack chivers, found out i was do-ing this and put a stop to it, so i was left with the following musical resources: the superb bach played in the chapel by teddy keller and the sing-alongs at the head Master’s Sunday coffee where John humason accompanied us on piano. worst of all, in addition to bad food, and no jazz guitar instruction, there were no girls.

Allen�Johnson�’54�

LawrentianTHE SPRING 2013

22 T H E L AW R E N T I A N

Music – sung and instrumen-tal, choir and orchestral,

classical and popular, and all performed live – was a staple of Lawrenceville entertainment from the earliest years. Springtime would bring the entire stu-dent body to the steps of Memorial Hall between supper and evening prayers to sing these songs together. Though many of the musical pieces performed came from popular culture, by the early 1890s numerous “Law-renceville songs” had been written, and in 1896, School Music Director Fran-cis P. “Doggie” Trench compiled 40 of them to create a songbook, Songs of Lawrenceville. In addition to Trench, who composed several of the songs

therein, several other members of the School community, such as organist Francis Cuyler van Dyck Jr. and faculty

member Charles Henry Raymond, added their own Lawrenceville-centric musical contributions.

As the body of Lawrentian music written by faculty and alumni grew, the songbook was expanded and updated several times, culminating in the 1914 Fourth Edition, last issued in 1921 under the title The Lawrenceville Song Book. By then, the songbook contained nearly 75 songs about the School, including such toe-tappers as “In Olden Days” and “Out on the Esplanade.” Most notable among those early songs was “Triumphant Lawrence,” which first appeared in the songbook’s third edition. It was written by a member of the Class of 1896, Edward Chase “Snorky” Doug-las, who was second only to Francis C. van Dyck Jr. in his devotion to creating Lawrenceville songs during those early years. Despite his youthful passion for music, Douglas spent several decades running a family-owned pump manufac-turing plant before leaving the business world behind to become a professional organist and music instructor in his 50s. Late in life, Douglas combined his en-gineering background with his musical talents to develop several patents for electronic organ parts. A new generation of Lawrenceville songs began in 1939 when Lawrentia, the first of several annual spring musi-cal shows written by then Religion De-partment Chair Erdman Harris, debuted. With plots and songs focusing on famil-iar situations and events at Lawrencev-ille, Harris’s annual original musicals re-mained a favorite Lawrenceville fixture until 1944, when Harris left Lawrencev-ille to become the Headmaster of Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh. Perhaps the most lasting musical leg-acy of Harris was a song, first debuted

in 1943, that remained for many years synonymous with the Lawrenceville prom. When the then three-day celebra-tory weekend drew to a close, it was the tradition for boys to sing for their female guests at Sunday Coffee Hour, particu-larly the event’s hallmark Harris song, “Prom in the Spring.” The song was such a resonant part of the prom experience that its lyrics were often used as a basis for art for the prom edition of The Law-rence well into the 1960s. The departure of Harris did not leave campus without a Lawrentian composer laureate. In 1947, English Master John Humason took up the mantle and wrote original songs and skits for the spring show, titled Frankly Men. The show fo-

cused on the “news behind the news” of stories that appeared in The Lawrence and included songs such as “When You’re in Love,” “The Paper Song,” and “Campus Hero.” Humason would con-tinue to write musical numbers until the final original spring show in 1954. Although the composition of origi-nal Lawrenceville music slowed down in mid-20th century, the legacy of the earlier songs was not lost. Well into the 1960s, students continued to gather to sing with one another, using as their guides pocket-size red books with the lyrics to many Lawrenceville songs, in-cluding “On Memorial Steps” and “A Lower Room in Upper.” By the early 1980s, the shared cul-ture of coffee sings had fallen away and the traditional canon of Lawrenceville music had become the purview of the official School vocal groups such as The Lawrentians. With the end of communal singing, the common knowledge of Law-renceville songs has slowly but surely faded. Today the only traditional Law-rentian song known to most every living Lawrentian is “Triumphant Lawrence.” The Lawrenceville musical legacy is not lost, however. Every now and again, students or faculty who have rediscov-ered an old tune have tried to revive it, most recently with the still-rousing “On Down the Field,” which held sway not too long ago during football season. And, with the wealth of musical talent in our School community, whether fac-ulty, alumni, or current students, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the debut of the newest, greatest Lawrenceville School song just might be right around the corner.

A century ago, it was the fashion: The most prestigious colleges and universities all had their own unique repertoire of music about their school, typically written by students, alumni, or faculty. While many secondary schools of the early 1900s might have had an alma mater or a fight song written in their honor, only a handful of institutions embraced the comprehensive culture of “school music” as fervently as Lawrenceville.

BY JACQUELINE HAUN

Ask the Archivist9

S P R I N G 2 0 1 3 23

TheMusic MEN

to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the emancipation Proclamation, the lawrenceville School’s bunn library and the gruss center of the visual arts invited eminent historian James M. McPherson to campus to discuss lincoln’s life and legacy. McPherson, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 book battle cry of freedom, is the george henry davis ’86 Professor of history emeritus at Princeton university. his other books include crossroads of freedom (which was a new york times best-seller), abraham lincoln and the Second american revolution, and for cause and comrades: why Men fought in the civil war, which won the 1998 lincoln Prize. in his talk, which was held in the School’s gallery and open to the public, McPherson discussed lincoln’s difficulty with the timing of the emancipation Proclamation. although the president recognized it as a military necessity, he also knew it was necessary to make the announcement from a position of strength – after the union army handed him a decisive victory on the battlefield. this view was shared by Secretary of State william Seward, a devoted abolitionist, who stated that emancipation should not be a “cry for help…a last shriek of the retreat.” unfortunately, in the years leading up to 1863, union victories, decisive or otherwise, were few and far between. So an increasingly frustrated lincoln was forced to hold his tongue until the bloody battle of antietam, which was by no means a union rout (it was a particularly costly battle on both sides), but under the dire circumstances, was good enough. McPherson didn’t just devote his time at the podium to lincoln, but also to little known facts about the war itself, including how the union navy, by picking up former slaves, became a truly effective integrated fighting force, with 17 percent of the active sailors being african-american. these numbers, McPherson noted, would not be surpassed until after world war ii.

An Emancipation Education

L'ville�Letters9 News�in�Brief9

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 7

Ryan o’rourke ’13 recently paddled the competition at boston university’s agganis arena, winning the Men’s Junior division at the 2013 c.r.a.S.h.-b world indoor rowing championships.

competing against the clock on an ergometer (erg), an indoor rowing machine used for training, in a two-mile sprint, he recorded a time of 6:02.4, shaving 3.6 seconds off his personal best. the achievement was impressive enough for o’rourke to be subsequently featured in the Sports illustrated department “faces in the crowd.” this is not the first time o’rourke had won accolades for indoor rowing; in 2011 he finished third in the c.r.a.S.h.-b event and was since named one of the “top 20 rowers under 20” by rowing Magazine. these achievements are doubly impressive when one learns that o’rourke only took up the sport a few years ago as part of his training regimen for hockey. he soon discovered, however, that rowing was his true passion. he captained lawrenceville crew (which won the 2011 head of the Schuykill in boys' four and earned M.a.P.l. honors) and was selected to the u.S. Junior development team. this fall he will attend Princeton and, yes, plans to be

part of the university’s rowing team.

A Rowing Rout

Mathematics Master Miguel Bayona recently released his second math app, Calc101, which gives students using iPads a visual, dynamic representa-tion of the two main concepts of calculus: tangent lines and areas under the curve. The app can be downloaded on iTunes. “For a long time, I’ve thought

about what I would like to have as a tool for my calculus stu-dents,” Bayona said. “This app is it.” The primary selling point of Calc101 is that the app “takes advantage of the interactive functionality of the iPad,” he explained. Ordinarily, students learning calculus enter an equa-

tion into a graphing calcula-tor, push a button, and a graph appears; this app, on the other hand, provides the functionality that enables the user to change parameters and watch the graph react to the new values. The graph can be pinched, stretched, and made larger and smaller at the student’s discretion. “Stu-dents can watch the transition between stages,” explained Bay-ona. Abstract concepts “come alive at the user’s fingertips.” “Neither Calc101 nor my first app, KineMath, are going to re-place how calculus is taught,” he noted, “but these tools have the potential to enhance learning. Today’s students are visually oriented, so they might be able to make discoveries and explore mathematical ideas in a more in-tuitive way.”

Bayona Creates Calculus App


A Poetic Plethora

It was a good season for poetry lovers at lawrenceville as celebrated scribes brenda Shaughnessy and kay ryan visited campus. Shaughnessy, a national book critics circle finalist, is the author of three books of poetry and has had her work appear in a number of prominent publications including harper’s, McSweeney’s, the nation, the new yorker, and the Paris

review. Selected to be lawrenceville’s throrton wilder artist-in-residence, Shaughnessy spent a week at the School attending classes, reading her work, and meeting with students and faculty. the visit made quite an impression on the poet, as she pointed out in an all-School meeting. “i’m so moved by every smile,” she noted. “i’ve been energized by you.” the bulk of Shaughnessy’s talk to the School community, however, consisted of frank and thoughtful advice for aspiring writers. “rejection is inevitable,” she noted. “new writers must expect it, court it. being a writer is not a straight path to success. it is an up and down process.” Shaughnesy learned this the hard way; after she got her first book published, she still received rejections for her second manuscript. “our work fails and fails and fails and fails until it succeeds.” She also discussed rewriting. “every writer has written something crappy,” she said, courting laughs from the appreciative students. “thank god for revisions, editing, and holding down the delete button.” but the most important advice she provided was to stop procrastinating and get writing. “how many times have you heard, ‘i have it all up here,’” she asked, pointing to her head. “‘all i have to do is write it.’? well, milk doesn’t shoot out of the cow into your cereal bowl. write!” kay ryan also visited lawrenceville’s campus, in this case as the School’s special guest for 2013 Merrill Poetry seminar. the 16th u.S. Poet laureate, a recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and described by the Poetry foundation as “one of the greatest living american poets,” ryan regaled students with some of her love poems – several of which, she noted, are often recited at weddings.

“i’d like to know how those marriages turned out,” she mused. engaged in a lively q&a with the students, ryan revealed that she has frequently found inspira-tion from ripley’s believe it or not and that she endures “many, many false starts” with her po-ems. “i write all the time and most of the things i write don’t work,” she confessed. “i end up with maybe 12 poems a year i want to publish.” when asked if she ever felt pressure to censor her thoughts and ideas, ryan admitted that she does. “[i censor my writing] for a variety of reasons, mostly if it is something i am ashamed of or would be hurtful to someone else. one of the greatest difficulties of writing is finding ways to say things that are not directly revealing. [through poetry] i can create theoretical situations and find a way to handle material that i would never address otherwise. “i love to write,” she said, because it gives her “the opportunity to talk back to the world. it is a complete thrill, an engagement like no other, to articulate something new.” lawrenceville doesn’t need to reach outside its gates to find exemplary poets. the School’s own dean of faculty chris cunningham P’14 has established himself in the field as well. his most recent poem, “rapunzel’s Mother” was recently published in the Michigan quarterly review, thus adding another title to his already long list of magazine and anthology credits including iowa review, Southwest review, Poetry international, cincinnati review, best new Poets 2006, cimarron review, notre dame review, Mississippi quarterly, and many others. cunningham was also twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is at work on a book titled Mr. anderson.

the 16th u.s. poet

laureate, a recipient of

the 2010 pulitzer prize in

poetry and described by

the poetry foundation as

“one of the greatest

living american poets,”

Kay ryan regaled

students with some of her

love poems – several of

which, she noted, are

often recited at weddings.

G�From�left,�Brenda�Shaughnessy,�Kay�Ryan

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 9

Flags From Our Fighters

Captain Chris Tanner ’01, the Commander of the 101st Air Assault Division’s Path-finder Company, recently presented Lawrenceville with a very special gift – a flag that was carried into combat in Operation Endur-ing Freedom in Afghani-stan. The flag, along with a second flag that was desig-nated for the United States Military Academy Prep School, was sent by Tanner to Maj. John Simar (ret.) P’02, Lawrenceville’s Ath-letic Director. The Pathfinders under Tanner’s command are an elite light infantry unit

trained to go into combat zones via helicopter. Mak-ing up less than one percent of Army personnel, the Path-finders serve an important re-connaissance function, drop-ping into hot zones to scout out and establish parachute drop sites and helicopter landing sites for air assaults. Best known for their heroic jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944, when they led the way for the Allied forces, the Pathfinders’ motto is “First In, Last Out.” At Lawrenceville, Tanner ran track and cross-country, no doubt good preparation for leading ground recon-

naissance missions. Since 9/11, sending com-bat flags to supporters back home has become a military tradition. Lawrenceville’s flag, along with the certifi-cates and commemorative medallions, are on display in the first trophy case in-side the main entrance to the Field House. We thank Tanner and the members of Pathfinder Com-pany, Bravo Company and Task Force Eagle Assault for their bravery, their ser-vice in defense of freedom, and their very special gift to Lawrenceville.


BOyS’ BASEBALLRecord: 6-16

coach: Champ Atlee ’62 H’79 P’92

captains: Jon Hayden ’13

Ian Naccarella ’13

BOyS’ cREwm.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS coach: Ben Wright

captain: Ryan O’Rourke ’13

gIRLS’ cREwcoach: Bernadette Martin Teeleycaptain: Julia Bretz ’13

BOyS’ gOLf

Record: 8-3 coach: Tim Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99captains: Jordan Lerner ’13

Stefan Gooch ’13

by nicole uliasz

SPRING SeASoNSTATS


Sports�Roundup9

gIRLS’ gOLfRecord: 2-3 coach: Gus Hedberg H’03 P’96 ’00captains: Hannah Baik ’13

Julia Yao ’13

BOyS’ LAcROSSE m.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS N.J.I.S.A.A. cHAmPIONS Record: 13-7

coach: Allen Fitzpatrick ’73 H’85 ’89

P’99 ’04

captains: Stowe Faircloth ’13

Allistair Berven ’13

John Salemi ’13

Kevin McDonough ’13

gIRLS’ LAcROSSE m.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS Record: 9-7

coach: Lisa Ewanchyna

captains: Delaina Smith ’13 Annie Morris ’13

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 11


gIRLS’ SOfTBALL Record: 7-11

coach: John Schiel

captains: Lauren Eckhardt ’13 Karen Prihoda ’15

BOyS’ TENNISm.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS Record: 8-5 coach: Dave Cantlay captains: Dan Harris ’13

Krishna Bikkasani ’13

BOyS’ TRAcKm.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS N.J.I.S.A.A. cHAmPIONS Record: 2-0 coach: Steve Schustercaptains: Chris Cook ’13

Elliot Xu ’13

gIRLS’ TRAcKm.A.P.L. cHAmPIONS N.J.I.S.A.A. cHAmPIONS Record: 4-0 coach: Bill Schroedercaptains: Kyla Bolden ’13

Lizzie Edokwe ’13 Sara Schroder ’13

For�the�most�current�athletic�news�visit�www.lawrenceville.org/athletics.


WINTeRfeSTWoWS

CRoWdS

On�the�Arts9

One Minute Play • directed by Reneisha Peters ’14

Just Be Frank • directed by Lauren Schaffer ’15 and Dominique Doonquah ’15

How to Speak Man • directed by Zachary Campbell ’15

Revenge • directed by Jeremy Berman ’14

The Whole Shebang • directed by Shaili Babbar ’13, Celia Aidnoff ’13, and Sam Essig ’13

Harbingers of Turpitude • directed by Justin Parratt ’14

Shadow Day • directed by Maya Peterson ’14

Finger Food • directed by Kim Corcoran ’14

Check Please • directed by Naina Sahrawat ’16

The Last Hat • directed by Cara Washington ’14

Family Names • directed by Elijah Sumners ’14

The M Word • directed by Alice Yang ’15

On the Porch One Crisp Morning • directed by Janice Luo ’14 and Chandler Huggins ’14

Another Beautiful Story • directed by Ben Woodley ’13

Ferris Wheel • directed by Sabine Pallat ’14

The Importance of Being Earnest • directed by Helen Chen ’13

Julius Caesar • directed by Performing Arts Master Matt Campbell

WoWSCRoWdS

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 15

Winterfest, Lawrenceville’s annual performing

arts festival, provided theatergoers with a varied

and impressive month of drama. Over the course

of several weekends, students directed, produced,

and performed in 16 short plays. More ambitious

productions, The Importance of Being Earnest,

a cabaret featuring the best of Broadway, and a

Second Form presentation of Julius Caesar were

also performed for standing room only crowds.


Student artists of all stripes showed off their skills at the Gruss

Center for the Visual Arts Gallery at the School’s annual student

exhibit. The show, curated by Art Master Jamie Greenfield, had a

little something for everyone: paintings, drawings, photography,

pottery, and mixed-media pieces. Works from 40 artists, from

Second to Fifth forms, were included.

“This is a stellar show,” noted Greenfield. “It highlights the

range of our students’ technical and creative abilities.”

STudeNT ShoW

GAlleRyGRACeS


S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 17

GRACeS

According to Bob Ryan ’64, The

Best of Bob Ryan contains false

advertising. Out of the 44 Boston

Globe columns contained within

the new ebook, Ryan feels that

only about 20 of them rank as “the best.” Or

maybe 15. Not that he’s complaining. And

not that it matters all that much, anyway. As

fellow Globe scribe Dan Shaughnessy, who

wrote the foreword, points out, a book titled

“The Worst of Ryan would have been better

than The Best of the Rest of Us.”

You don’t need to be a Boston fan – or

even a sports fan – to grasp Shaughnessy’s

meaning. There is a playful, exciting, ur-

gent momentum at work in Ryan’s stories

that can dazzle even if the reader might not

be able to ID all the athletes. Ryan is more

than capable of bringing the uninitiated up

to speed. When, for example, he observes

that Boston Celtic Robert Parrish has “es-

tablished a bad case of the oopsies,” what

else, really, does one need to know?

What’s doubly remarkable is that Ryan

throughout his 44-year history at the Globe

banged out most of this prose with little

time to dither over a turn of phrase. Much

of what’s in The Best of Bob Ryan is what

the author describes as “good old-fashioned

deadline pieces.”

“A Celtics game might start at 7:00 and

end at 9:00,” Ryan explains, using the same

breezy, rat-a-tat information delivery sys-

tem that can be found in his columns. “In

the old days, you’re doing a running story

during the game. At the end of the first half

you’re laying down about 40 typewritten

lines, another graph or two by the end of

the third quarter, and, depending on how

the fourth quarter goes, another graph or

two. And then a lede. That’s the first edition

story. Then you go to the locker room and

the clock is on. The next edition deadline

would be 11:30. I hated the second edition.

By the time you come back from the locker

room and you sit down to compose, you’re

looking at about an hour or an hour and ten

to write. And if the game goes into over-

time, you have even less time. What you

were always praying for – always – was a

rout, because when you have a rout you can

start writing before the game is over. Just

plug stuff in. Just plug it in.”

A stressful job to be sure, but although

Ryan was busy taking notes, composing

copy, and providing historical context, he

was never too busy to not enjoy the game.

In Ryan’s columns his fandom always

shines through.

A Trenton native, Ryan’s passion for

sports – and sports writing – has been a part

of who he is for as long as he can remember.

“When I was a kid, my father would take

me to a Trenton Catholic game on a Friday

night,” he says. “But I never felt the game

had been validated until I read about it the

next day.”

So did Ryan write for The Lawrence?

“Did I write for The Lawrence?!” Ryan

sputters in response, his tone suggesting that

a stupider question has never been asked by

anyone, anywhere. “I worked for The Law-

rence for three years! I have my back copies

from ’62 to ’63 and ’63 to ’64! I was the

sports editor, and I was voted ‘Done Most

for The Lawrence!’ The Lawrence was es-

sential. That was a crucial point for me. I

was devoted to The Lawrence. All those

Wednesday and Saturday nights! Oh, my

“When I was a kid, my father would take me to a Trenton Catholic game on a friday night. But I never felt the game had been validated until I read about it the next day.”

Beantown’s From Sox to Celtics, Bob’s got Boston covered.BeST

Cover�to�Cover9


God! Absolutely!”

From Lawrenceville, he went to Boston

College, where upon graduation he nabbed

a spot on the Globe’s sports beat, where his

distinctive writing style soon earned him a

legion of loyal readers.

“When you write, you must be true to

your personality,” Ryan says. “There are

some very good writers who are remarkably

detached. They truly don’t care who wins or

loses. They just care about the story. That’s

fine for them, but that doesn’t work for me.

I am a fan, first and foremost. But being a

fan doesn’t mean you can’t be critical.”

The book provides ample evidence of

this. When Patriots Coach Bill Belichick

was caught taping opposing teams’ defen-

sive signals, for example, Ryan used his

bully pulpit to vivisect him.

In another column, Ryan pokes fun at the

unique narcissism of Red Sox fans. “When

the ball went through [Red Sox first base-

man] Bill Buckner’s legs, the fans thought

‘How could he do that to me? To ME!’”

he says with a laugh. “That attitude is not

unique to Boston, but is associated with

Boston to a higher degree than anywhere

else. Boston fans act as if nothing bad has

ever happened to anybody else. And I al-

ways tell them, ‘Why don’t you move to

Cleveland for a couple of years? Cleveland

hasn’t won any title in any major sport in

49 years. Not since the 1964 Browns. The

Indians haven’t won since 1948, the Cava-

liers have never won, and they don’t have

a hockey team. Oh, and they love football

more than you.’”

So The Best of Bob Ryan has a little of

everything. Basketball, baseball, football,

hockey, the Olympics, a smattering of ten-

nis and boxing, and even a surprisingly per-

ceptive take on the 1992 Oscar contenders.

And so what if Ryan might not find it all

to be his best? It’s still going to be some of

the best writing you could ever add to your

Kindle.

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 19


How�to�Do�Everything�(Part�6)9


This one trick unites John Grisham novels, Super Bowl games and knock-knock jokes – just about any compelling content that mil-lions of people devour year after

year. But I didn’t learn it at Lawrence- ville or in college, alas. I am sorry to say that before I knew this trick, I wrote many stories – dutiful stories full of conflict and characters, stories that could have been better. I learned this secret from my husband, John, and it took him a decade to teach me. He is not a writer himself, but he reads whatever I write, God bless him. And ev-ery so often, he would say, “Remember

that story you did about that guy who was charged with murder?” “Yes,” I’d reply, thinking back to the murder trial in DC, one of hundreds in a city with epidemic gun violence. The case was not particularly momentous to anyone outside of the families of the victim and the defendant (who was, in the end, found not guilty). And the story itself was, in truth, too long by half. “That was the best story you ever did.” He’d say it with admiration. And the first three years or so, I took it as a compli-ment. “Thanks,” I’d say, basking in my mag-nificence.

But as the years went by, as I wrote more stories for bigger audiences, stories I’d ob-sessed over, traveling to remote places, digging up obscure documents and captur-ing quotes that read (to me) like poetry, he would still occasionally reference that one story – something I’d written when I was 24, before I could legally rent a car. “Thanks,” I’d mumble, and think to my-self, “I’ve wasted my career.” Finally, I considered the possibility that he might be giving me advice. He wasn’t reading these stories like a government official or a journalism professor. He was reading them as a human being. And he was telling me something important.

By Amanda Ripley ’92 Come CloSe. I hAve A mAGIC TRICk To TeACh you. IT’S oNe

you CAN PuT INTo uSe ImmedIATely. TRy IT ouT oN youR

BoSS, youR eNGlISh TeACheR, youR TheRAPIST – ANyoNe

Who mIGhT APPReCIATe A Good SToRy. IT IS So SImPle

ThAT, If you ARe doING IT RIGhT, IT WIll feel AlmoST lIke

CheATING.

StorytohowaTell

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 21

What was so great about that story? It was a mystery. That’s it. Every story needs a mystery more than anything else. But here’s the thing: The mystery does not have to be a murder mystery (although that is ideal). It can be a very small mystery, almost imper-ceptible to the human eye: As in, What is the secret to telling a good story? Or, Why do more men die in floods than women? Or, Knock knock! Who’s there? The brain likes mysteries, I finally un-derstood. So give the brain what it wants. Once I’d accepted this truth, I found it took surprisingly little effort to turn almost any

story into a mystery. A story about online learning? No prob-lem: Will the 11-year-old girl taking an online college-level physics class from Pakistan pass the final exam – even though her power goes off six hours a day? Will she or won’t she? Mysteries can even be embedded in a PowerPoint presentation. (In fact, to do a PowerPoint presentation without any mystery should be a crime. Really.) Mys-teries can be accessorized with pie charts, riddled with data. As in, Why did our com-pany fail to meet earnings expectations despite having a virtual monopoly in the market? Hmm.

The trick is to ask a question – and then not answer it. Not right away. “Readers are human,” author Lee Child wrote in a lovely essay on suspense in The New York Times last year, “and humans seem programmed to wait for answers to questions they witness being asked.” This wonderful trait, the human attraction to the cliffhanger, no matter how low the cliff, is one that should be exploited at every op-portunity. What’s that? Oh, right: More men die in floods because they’re more likely to work outside and to overestimate their ability to drive or walk through standing water. And yes, the Pakistani girl passed the physics final. With distinction. Now you know.

Amanda Ripley ’92 writes for Time Magazine and The Atlantic, among other places, and is an Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation. Her next book, The Smartest Kids in the World, comes out in August.

Know how to do something? Write the editor at [email protected], and your pearls of wisdom may appear in a future issue.

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Going by the Paul Dry ’62 publishes only books he likes. This has turned out to be a surprisingly effective business strategy.Book


In the years before Paul Dry ’62 found-ed his namesake publishing company, he made his living buying and sell-

ing options on stocks traded at the Phila-delphia Exchange. It was not, he admits, as grand as what goes on at the NYSE or in the Chicago futures pit, but by placing smart, modest, and conservative bets, Dry made a comfortable living. The job, agreeable as it was, however, did not ignite his passion. Dry always liked the stimulation of reading and talk-ing about what he’d read; trading, howev-er, left that craving unmet, so he and some neighborhood friends founded a book group in 1986. (After more than 27 years, they still meet once a month and hash out their thoughts about the month’s selected title.) Dry also got together with another group of friends to read James Joyce’s Ulysses aloud, page by page – an endeavor that took four-and-a-half years. In 1994, Dry continued to scratch his reading itch by trying his hand at teaching. “I was 50, so I wasn’t a spring chicken at that point,” he says with a laugh. He started small, teaching at night at his daughter’s high school. In the course, titled Metamor-phosis, the students and he discussed sto-ries that featured dramatic transformations – The Odyssey (the part when Odysseus’ companions turned into swine) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and, of course, the iconic story by Kafka. This class soon led to Dry’s working with his brother, Murray, a professor at Middlebury College, during the school’s

January term. That first year, in 1995, the Dry brothers created a course titled Ameri-can Intellectual History. “Together we en-couraged each other and we had a great time,” he recalls. “For four weeks, the class met five days a week for two hours a day, and we figured the students should read six hours a day outside of class.” During this time, Dry was also operat-ing – albeit tentatively – along a parallel track. He had stationery printed up with a masthead that read “Bedrock Books.” “I had this idea of starting a publishing company but was hesitant,” he says. “It was one of those wayward ideas that you don’t mind spending a little money on because you don’t have to tell anybody about it.” Dry might not have told anyone, but over the next few years he did keep his publish-ing house idea moving forward. He pur-chased the rights to four out-of-print books and began to seek out a distributor. “Since I didn’t know anything about publishing, my idea was at first to publish reprints. It was an easier way to start. I would publish books that I thought were great but were out of print. That struck me as sensible.” In search of more knowledge about the industry, Dry spent two weeks in 1998 at the Stanford Professional Publishing Pro-gram. “It was a course for people in pub-lishing who wanted to move up in the busi-ness. The course answered questions such as, ‘How do you cultivate authors?’ ‘How do you assess the market?’ ‘How do you deal with First Amendment issues?’” he says. “I kept waiting for an answer to the

question, ‘How do you sell a lot of books?’ It turned out that nobody knew the answer to that one.” The takeaway was that there was no magic bullet – and that was the shot in the arm Dry needed. In January 2000, he printed his first four titles and, by the end of the year, had released four more. He had learned that the name “Bedrock Books” was copyrighted, so Dry christened his publishing house Paul Dry Books (www.pauldrybooks.com). The new name was a better fit, anyway. “So when people ask ‘What kind of books do you publish?’ I can say, ‘The books I like.’” It turns out that Dry likes many differ-ent kinds of books. Since its modest be-ginnings 13 years ago, the company has published nearly 100 titles on topics such as poetry, history, fiction, travel, science, young adult titles, and – no surprise here – literary criticism. Paul Dry Books is still a tiny affair (it has only three employees) but that, in no small part, is the secret to the company’s success. “When you publish books, you shouldn’t think you’re going to make much money. At Paul Dry Books, I have kept the scale small. That way the risk is lower. Every-thing is not riding on one title.” In other words, Dry is pursuing the same smart, modest, and conservative gambles he – once upon a time – made as a seat-holder on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Unlike his days on the exchange, however, these days Dry gets to pursue his passion full time.

Take�This�Job�&�Love�It9

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 23

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S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 25

Spirit The

of

Invention

Lawrentians have become legendary for many varied and intriguing accomplishments. John Hays Hammond Jr. of the Class of 1905, however, may be the first Lawrentian whose status includes the notion that he remains on Earth as a ghost – if a recent episode of the SyFy Channel’s series Ghost Hunters is to be taken at face value, that is.

By�Jacqueline�Haun

Of course, before he was Lawrenceville’s best-known specter, Hammond had made more traditional marks on the world. The middle son of an American mining engi-neer, John Hays Hammond Sr., Hammond spent an exotic childhood in South Africa and the Transvaal, where his father amassed a fortune by managing mining properties for Cecil Rhodes and working as a consul-tant for Daniel Guggenheim’s Guggenheim Exploration Co. In 1896, when Hammond was eight years old, the family moved from Africa to England and he was placed in a boarding school at Eastbourne, Kent. It was while living in Britain that Hammond be-came entranced with castles, a passion that would influence him for the rest of his life – and perhaps even after his death. When Hammond was 11, the family de-cided to return to America. He, along with his older brother, Harris, entered The Hill School at Pottstown, PA. Although Har-ris maintained a warm connection with his alma mater following his graduation, John Jr. developed a markedly contentious rela-tionship with Headmaster John Meigs for reasons now unknown. By autumn 1903, the boys’ father had transferred his name-sake son to The Lawrenceville School. The time that Hammond spent at Hill was not all in vain, however; when he was a student there, his father took him on a visit to the laboratory of a local acquaintance: Thomas Edison. The one-day visit to the inventor’s West Orange facility awakened the young man to the wonders of invention and sowed the seeds of his own career as an inventor. Edison was convinced by the

boy’s indefatigable questions during their encounter that he was in the presence of a future inventor. When the two parted that day, the elder inventor sent the 12-year-old on his way with two gifts: some original sketches of Edison’s first ideas for the pho-nograph and the advice to focus on inven-tions that were commercial, with the caveat to “patent all your ideas – and be sure to get a good lawyer.” For the rest of his life, Hammond attributed the day he spent with Edison to be the most formative in guiding his career – despite later relationships with other prominent inventors such as Alexan-der Graham Bell and Nikola Tesla. Accord-ing to biographer John Dandola, Hammond immediately became obsessed with invent-ing and even set up makeshift labs in his parents’ home, first in Lakewood, NJ, and, following a move, in Gloucester, MA. Not all of Hammond’s experiments took place on breaks from school. When he was boarding at Lawrenceville, he came up with his first invention: a circuit breaker that turned out the light in his room in Dickin-son whenever the door was opened by, say, his housemaster – allowing the young man to violate the School’s 8 p.m. lights out rule with impunity. Following his graduation from Law-renceville, Hammond went to his father’s alma mater, the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. There, despite struggling with the mathematics requirements of the program, he embraced the burgeoning field of radio dynamics and, combining it with a natural love for sailing, began to experiment with radio-controlled boats.

Hammond took a job in the U.S. Patent Office following his graduation from Yale in 1910 in order to keep abreast of the latest developments in his chosen field. As Ham-mond later explained, “I could see myself, a 22-year-old kid, working two or three years on a project and then discovering that…500 others had already beaten me to it.” Ham-mond continued to focus his attention on remote/radio control. By the time he left the Patent Office, he was an expert. Setting up his own research lab, Ham-mond Research Corp., on family property in Gloucester, Hammond threw himself into remote-control research, quickly hiring a small cadre of like-minded engineers and fellow inventors to conduct experiments in the ground-breaking field. The young in-ventor and his research team would go on to hold more than 400 patents including one that is the basis for still-extant push-button tuning in car radios. More exotic inventions included radio-controlled “ghost ships,” developed with military defense in mind (the prototypes of which unnerved the fish-ermen on Gloucester Harbor); an “electric dog” that served hors d’oeuvres on a tray to guests; and, with the advent of World War I, torpedoes that could follow a light source to its intended target – or move toward a silhouette on a bright, sunny day. The light-seeking torpedo and remote-controlled boats would not be Hammond’s only work for the U.S. military during the war. He was also responsible for the cre-ation of a 12-inch gun shell filled with a mixture of aluminum powder and iron ox-ide, called thermite, that would ignite upon


376

June 14, 1919

SClEN'IlFlC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT No 2267

The Electric Dog following its luminous master, and a general view oi‘ its internal arrangement

The Electric Dog

Use of the Selenium Cell to Make an Orientation Mechanism

Tm: principle of orientation is well exemplified in

nature. A large variety of plants, flowers, and other

living examples of the realm of botany, are endowed

with the power of turning themselves for the purpose

of gaining the beneficial effect of the sun's rays. A

very common and good example of these is the sun-

flower, so named because of this well-defined ability to

follow the path of the sun from east to west across

the heavens.

The mechanism herein described is merely an exam-

ple of one of the many ways in which an inanimate

object may be made to act like one possessed of life

and as such capable of reacting like living objects from

the eflects of external stimuli.

Nikola Tesla, in a classic discussion, “The Problem

of Increasing Human Energy,“ expressed the firm

belief that every man, every living organism, is

"merely an automaton endowed with power of

movement, which responds to external stimuli

beating upon its sense organs, and thinks and acts

accordingly." He goes on to say: “With these ex-

periments it \vas only natural that, long ago, I

conceived the idea of constructing an automaton

\vhich would mechanically represent me and which

would respond, as I do myself, but of course, in

a much more primitive manner, to external influ-

ences. Such an automaton, evidently, had to have

motive power, organs for locomotion, directive

organs, and one or more sensitive organs so

adapted as to be excited by external stimuli. This

machine would, I reasoned, perform its movements

in the manner of a living being, for it would have

all the chief mechanical characteristics or ele-

ments of the same. . . . Whether the automaton

be of flesh and bone, or of wood and steel, it mat-

tered little provided it could perform all the du-

ties required of it like an intelligent being. To

do so, it had to have an element corresponding to

the mind, which would eifect the control of all of

its movements and operations, and cause it to act,

in any unforseen case that might present itself,

with knowledge, reason, judgment, and experi-

ence. But this element I could easily embody in it

by conveying to it my own intelligence, my own

understanding.”

In 1898 Tesla evolved the first practical telau-

tomaton, which was in the form of a crewless

boat that could be controlled from the shore or an-

other boat by radiated energy. By means of this in-

vention, which is the model from which all the wireless-

directed torpedoes of today have been copied, Tesla

was able to make an inanimate machine perform move-

ments with the intelligence, reason, experience, and

judgment of a living being.

This first automaton, it will be seen, was one which

acted with the intelligence transmitted to it from the

mind of its master, rather than with any intelligence

which was an inherent part of its own makeup. Al-

though, without a single doubt the intelligence of such

an automaton as Mr. Tesla constructed, and which I in

recent years have perfected for military purposes,

would in any case be far superior to that of a machine

‘Century Mnqnzinr, June. 1900.

By Benjamin Franklin Miessner

possessed of its own mechanical brain, my work on

the electric dog represents an attempt to evolve an

automaton which would conduct itself in much the

same manner as do some of the lower forms of animal

life, that is by purely reflea: action.

In its first form the orientation mechanism was, like

the sunflower, capable only of so turning itself as to

face the source of energy producing the stimulation of

its sensitive organs. This apparatus I devised for use

with a searchlight-selenium system of torpedo control

for Mr. John Hays Hammond, Jr., with whom I was

associated at that time. The purpose of this mechan-

ism was to keep continuously facing the controlling

searchllghts on shore or ship, a selenium cell connected

to the control switches on the torpedo. Should the rays

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representation (right) of the electric elements involved

of the enemy's searchliglits reach the receiving selen-

ium celi in sufficient intensity, interference destructive

to the original control would result.

It is this problem of interference which has ever

baffled the most advanced in this new art in their ef-

forts to prodouce an automaton able to recognize the

voice of its master absolutely and without fail de-

spite the efforts of others to imitate or reproduce that

voice in the miuutest detail. It is this problem which

has made necessary the national and international laws

relative to the use of radiotelegraphic apparatus. It is,

I think, a problem of constructing an automaton which

is possessed of more than human intelligence, for that

automaton must be able to recognize the call of its

master, and not the imitations of others, however per-

fect they may be. We ourselves cannot perform such

a feat. 'l‘he only method which can be applied success-

fully in rendering an automaton susceptive only to the

call of its master is to prevent the calls 0] others from

reaching it. This the orientation mechanism has done

for the searchlight-selenium or infra-red ray systems of

torpedo control.

It was about the time of our first experiments with

the orientation mechanism that Professor Jaques Iioeb

‘first announced the results of his experiments and in-

vestigations with moths and the reasons for the fa-

miliar attractive effect on them by sources of light.

He found that the moth files into a flame because its

flight is automatically directed by some kind of reflex

action due to the stimulation of light-sensitive organs

on either side of its body. Professor Loeb found fur-

ther that when one alone of these organs is exposed

to illumination the moth experiences an unpleas-

ant sensation that induces a reflex action which

causes the moth to turn the exposed side of its

body away from the light in its effort to dispel the

unpleasant sensation. As soon, however, as the

other side becomes exposed to the radiation, the

pain and reflex action is again set up, the same

cycle of events being repeated. The forward fiight

of the moth therefore carries it directly toward

the source of light.

Here in the moth we have the case of a living

automaton capable of orientating itself with re-

spect to a source of radiated energy, and possessed

at the same time with organs of locomotion, an

automaton which performs its motions mechanic-

ally in response to external stimuli.

The next form of my orientation mechanism was

a reproduction of the moth mechanism, that is, one

which, like the moth, was provided with means of

propulsion. In its present form the electric dog

consists of a rectangular box about three feet long,

one and one-half feet wide and one foot high. This

box contains all the instruments and mechanism,

and is mounted upon three wheels, two of which

are geared to a driving motor; the third, on the

rear end, is so mounted that its bearings can be

turned in a horizontal plane for steering, much

like the front wheel of a child's velocipede. Two

large, glass lenses on the forward end, separated

by a protruding, noselike partition, appear very

much like huge eyes.

If a pocket flash light be turned on the mu-

chine it will immediately spring into action, but

will stop as suddenly if the light be snapped off or

turned away. If the light be held stationary and di-

rected upon the dog, it will amble up until its own

motion causes it to come directly under the light, and

therefore into such a position that the light will not

shine in its glass eyes; there it stops and the whining

of its driving motor also ceases. If now one turns the

flashlight into its eyes and walks about the room the

dog will immediately respond and follow the mov-

ing light wherever it goes, with a loud metallic ciank

at each wag of its steering-wheel tail. This wagging

of the tail occurs at every turn or every time at which,

for any reason, the. light fails to reach one of the great

eyes. It always turns on those occasions so that the

eye cut off from the light by the nose-like screen, will

again see the light. So long as the light reaches both

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S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 27

While he was boarding at Lawrenceville, he came up with his first invention: a circuit breaker that turned out the light in his room in Dickinson whenever the door was opened by, say, his housemaster – allowing the young man to violate the School’s 8 p.m. lights out rule with impunity.

being fired and form a 5400°F molten mass that, on impact, could eat through the thick-est armor plate of the day. Hammond had further refined the weapon to spew hydro-cyanic gas to ward off firefighters. While the military was thrilled with the weapon, Hammond himself carried a burden of guilt for many years afterward for having created such a darkly destructive device. By the 1920s, having achieved great suc-cess and global renown for his radio-control work, Hammond allowed himself to focus on other pursuits. His childhood passion for castles had led him to build himself a Tudor-inspired bungalow on the family property in Gloucester, as well as a castle keep that served as his laboratory. (Given the number of small explosions that oc-curred over the years, perhaps he was onto something in having it made of stone rather than flammable wood.) Following a trip to Europe in 1924, Hammond returned home newly invigorated by the idea of creating an

American castle and filling it with authentic Gothic antiques. For the next several de-cades, he worked on his new home, which he dubbed Abbadia Mare, Latin for “Abbey by the Sea,” incorporating genuine architec-tural details imported from European ruins into the structure. The castle was designed in three sections, showcasing the development of French and Italian architecture between the 12th and 15th centuries, with each of the 50 rooms serving as galleries to display setting-appropriate antiques that Hammond brought back from Europe. Hammond himself acknowledged that his intent was to make his home a mu-seum. “In cold, restrained New England, a place with the romantic beauty of the Italian and French past may prove the inspiration of many poor artists and students to come.” Although there was little use for his ra-dio control skills in constructing his home, Hammond’s inventive nature was still on display in some of the castle’s intriguing

details. Among the more unusual elements in the design were a functioning moat, a “whisper room” library in which words spoken softly on one side of the chamber could be clearly heard by someone else on the opposite end, and several secret pas-sages. Also contributing to the look, feel, and, most important, sound of Hammond’s castle home was his obsession with pipe or-gans. Hammond – who was not related to the famous Hammonds of organ company fame – had begun studying the organ as a teenager and became so captivated with both the technology of the instrument and its music that he installed a unique, 10,000-pipe organ in his castle’s centerpiece, the Great Hall. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, famed organist Virgil Fox was often invited to play the organ and even recorded two albums at the castle. As if having a Gothic castle filled with antiques were not adequate to give Ham-

mond’s home the reputation of being haunt-ed, his personal interest in the occult made it an inevitability. Irene Fenton, the divorcée Hammond married in 1925 – to the great consternation of his conservative mother, who threatened to disown him – was a great believer in astrology and spiritualism. Ham-mond eventually came to share his wife’s beliefs, and the couple frequently hosted séances, as well as tarot and horoscope readings in their home. Following Irene Hammond’s death in 1959, Hammond began to prepare for his own eventual entry into the spirit world. With no children of their own and no fam-ily members financially able to take on the expensive upkeep of the castle, the inven-tor began to court various organizations to be the heirs to his estate. Fortunately for Hammond, he found a taker in Cardinal Richard Cushing, the archbishop of Bos-ton. Following Hammond’s death in 1965,

the Roman Catholic Church took over the

property until Cushing’s own death in 1970,

when it was then put up for sale. Today Ab-

badia More – more commonly referred to as

Hammond Castle Museum – is in the care

of a small board. The castle is open for self-

guided tours and educational events and can

be booked for special events. If you visit,

be sure to keep an eye out for the specter of

John Hays Hammond Jr. If you see him, let

him know you are a fellow Lawrentian.

He may even respond, if you have the

correct equipment. When the ghost hunt-

ers of The Atlantic Paranormal Society

(TAPS) addressed a seemingly empty room

during their recent televised investigation,

something caused an electromagnetic K-II

meter to flash as if in response to questions.

It certainly was a fitting way to communi-

cate with the spirit of a legendary electro-

magnetic pioneer.

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 29

As if having a Gothic castle filled with antiques were not adequate to give Hammond’s home the reputation of being haunted, his personal interest in the occult made it an inevitability.

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I In fall 1987, several weeks before classes began, Jeannie Ringo ’88 (now Tarkenton) arrived on campus to begin practice for

Lawrenceville’s first ever girls’ tennis season. Tarkenton was a PG but, due to skipping a grade in elementary school, was still the age of an in-coming senior. She saw her relative youth as a chance to chalk up a few more experiences and see a bit more than the inside of a Cincinnati pub-lic school. “This could give me another year to do something unusual before heading off to college,” she recalled. “And this seemed like an unusual opportunity.”

Unusual it certainly was. For everyone. In fact, Tarkenton’s most vivid memory of that first day was the boys’ unusual wardrobe choice: T-shirts announcing a “Farewell to Tradition.” Below the text was a drawing of a girl’s face inside a red circle with a line drawn through it. Sounds hostile, but as Tarkenton is quick to note, there was a clear disconnect between the message on the shirts and the attitudes of those who wore them. The boys were nothing if not welcoming. “Most of us found the shirts funny, but back in the dorms there were a couple of the girls saying

CoeduCationReColleCtion

L��By�Mike�Allegra

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 31

32 t h e l aw r e n t i a n32 t h e l aw r e n t i a n

‘I can’t believe he was wearing that. Don’t they want us here?’ “But I understood where they were com-ing from,” she says. “Many of the boys who were seniors [in 1987] came to Lawrence-ville as second formers. They expected to be a part of an all-boys school. They had ex-pected their senior year to be quite different from what it would be otherwise. The shirts were a relatively nice way to deal with that.” That said, even Tarkenton was a little sur-prised to show up for her first practice and find her coach wearing the same shirt.

Tarkenton was one of only 29 girls who would become part of the Class of 1988 – a small group that made a seismic impact on the School as a whole. Though each girl arrived with a unique set of strengths and abilities, all of them were the same in one significant way; they were outgoing. They had to be, really. Any high school senior who voluntarily uproots herself from all that she knows to take part in a bold social experiment had to have more than a little bit of moxie. It was a group that, knowingly or unknowingly, refused to be overlooked.

Lawrenceville did nothing if not prepare for their arrival: Facilities were built, female teachers were hired, other schools’ coeducational growing pains were examined. There was, however, an unacknowledged understanding that the true test of Lawrenceville’s adaptability would be proven only after the girls’ arrived. Those who would be required to adapt the most – but were arguably prepared the least – were the boys. “Outside of the houses being built, there was no big preparation from our perspec-tive,” says Sam Kosoff ’88, who first ar-rived at Lawrenceville in 1984 as a second former. “There was no sensitivity training. There were no discussions in class that I can recall. I’m sure there were House meetings on the subject about visitation and parietal rules, but I don’t remember them.” Although administrative outreach to the boys might have been unmemorable, coeducation was a constant source of con-

Part of me wanted to maintain the values of tradi-tion. I thought, ‘The School was founded on being all male and it would be great to stay all male and have The Boys’ Club keep going.’ But the flipside was ‘Hey, we have girls coming!’ – Si Bunting ’88

versation among the boys themselves. “We were always talking about it,” remembers Si Bunting ’88, Kosoff’s roommate in Kin-nan. “There were people who were dead set against it. As for me, I went through a few different emotions. Part of me wanted to maintain the values of tradition. I thought, ‘The School was founded on being all male and it would be great to stay all male and have The Boys’ Club keep going.’ But the flipside was ‘Hey, we have girls coming!’ I was a 17-year-old guy and there was cer-tainly some appeal to that as well.” Kosoff’s feeling on the subject was, “This should be cool,” and for good reason. Until 1987 the Lawrenceville social scene more or less began and ended with the Fri-day night dances, when girls were “bused in” from Purnell or Stuart. “That was the way we operated, and it was awkward and goofy,” he says. “The dances were eagerly anticipated, but it was a lot of bravado be-cause no one wanted to get out there and dance. It was the stereotypical, boys on one side of the gym and girls on the other.” That part of the social life would im-prove, but the tradeoff was a distinct change in the School’s dynamic that was in some cases sorely missed, even among coeduca-tion’s supporters. Kosoff could certainly see the advantages of coeducation; soon after the start of classes he was dating PG Jenny Rose ’88 (now Savino). But, even for him, the change was bittersweet. “In the era before girls, the boys were – and I mean this in a positive way – self-absorbed,” Kosoff says. “In our houses we would do homework, watch a ballgame, and maybe play one of those made-up games like ‘roofball’ or ‘[garbage]can LAX’ for three hours. This culture faded after girls ar-rived and it is something I lamented. A nice, low pressure environment was replaced with opportunities to hang out with girls. Everything else went by the wayside.” “It layered in a huge variable as to how you structured your student life,” adds Bun-ting. “You become more conscious as to how you look and how you behave when there are women walking around. It felt like two totally different eras.” Savino was Tarkenton’s roommate, though not initially. She, Tarkenton, and a third girl, Merrell Builder ’88 (now Thomp-son), occupied three adjacent singles on the third floor of McClellan House, the then-

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 33


home for seniors and PG girls. The trio got along so well that they decided to cram their beds into one of those singles and live to-gether. “We were having such a good time with each other,” says Tarkenton. “I think it was an inspired, late-at-night girl moment. We figured it would be like a slumber party all year long. We were staying up all night talk-ing anyway, so why not?” “We kind of restructured our house our-selves,” adds Savino. “We made one bed-room an upstairs common room, we made another bedroom a study room for anyone who wanted to use it, and we took the third room to sleep in. It was a different time; doors were never locked. We kept our clothes in our own rooms so when I went in to change for field hockey or whatever it would not be unusual to find someone in that room.” This kind of flexibility, so abundant in McClellan, was not as common in the boys’ houses. It was born out of an almost imme-diate sense of community, a “we’re all in this together” vibe that was fostered in no small part by then-McClellan Housemaster

Leita Hamill H’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99. “Leita really set the tone,” Savino recalls. “She said to us when we got there ‘You are in a position to join the School, but the School has been around for very long time as an all-boys School. You need to respect that. It is important that you do this year right.’” The importance to “do this year right” was felt not just by the denizens of McClel-lan and the underform girls who occupied the other three new houses on campus, it was felt by the administration, too. This led to a perception among the boys that The School’s newest residents were more or less able to get away with murder. (This perception was reinforced as recently as this year by Head Master Elizabeth Duffy H’43, who, in her remarks to commemo-rate coeducation’s 25th anniversary, relayed a conversation she had with an anonymous alumna. This unnamed source, Duffy said, asserted that girls in the first year had more disciplinary leeway than the boys.) Tarkenton admits the perception had some truth to it, but notes that it requires some clarification. “We got away with

more because we had nine months to use up the ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out Rule.’ Whereas boys who had been here for years already had one or two strikes by the time they reached their senior year. That drove the boys crazy, and I can’t blame them.” Savino views it more diplomatically. “People were trying to figure things out,” she says. “Here we were in this all-girls house. If we had a male faculty member on duty and he was coming upstairs, he would need to announce himself. It became a run-ning joke. It’s not that we were getting away with things. I don’t think all the rules were yet in place.” This disciplinary leeway may also have been because of the relationship the girls had with their housemaster. “That was one thing that always bewildered me,” says Ko-soff. “The girls shared so much more with their housemasters than we ever did with ours.” “Oh, that’s just a girl thing,” Tarkenton says with a laugh. “Every 17-year-old girl greatly benefits from a woman in her life who is not her mother. If I needed to talk to Leita at 2 a.m, I could. She would go off the

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 35

record with me about something more than school. You could talk about your future or your family. Anything. Leita created an en-vironment that was very safe.” “Much to the boys’ dismay, if a girl’s heart was broken, Leita would know about it,” adds Savino. “That was a new dynamic for the boys to watch. I had a housemate who was stood up by a boy and, some 25 years later, Leita could still give you that boy’s name.” The senior girls were getting support from elsewhere as well. “There were many magical things about McClellan. It was named after Bruce H’57 ’60 and Mary Eliz-abeth H’50 ’52 ’57 ’59 ’79 who still visited campus and were a regular presence in our House,” says Savino. “Mr. and Mrs. Getz were benefactors. Bert Getz ’55 H’56 P’85 was president of the Board, and he would visit the house, too. Who has the president of the Board of Trustees coming by their home? We did. And then we had Head Mas-ter Si Bunting H’37 ’88 P’88 ’97 [the father of then-Lawrenceville senior Si Bunting] whose job was to help the School go coed. He was clearly invested in what we were doing, so Mr. Bunting would come by our House. We had a lot of adult presences in our House, and all of them were very warm and supportive.” In other areas, the feeling of change brought about by coeducation was less pronounced – the classroom, for instance. Both Bunting and Kosoff remember having classes in 1987-88 that were still all boys. Other classes had just one girl. But even that single presence could change the class-room dynamic. Sometimes that change was initiated by the teacher. “I do remember occasionally being asked for ‘The Female Perspective,’ in English,” recalls Tarkenton. “When we studied One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Mr. [James] Waugh H’85 ’88 P’68 ’70 ’72 ’74 ’76 called on me to read. He said, ‘In

general, I think girls often hear lyrical terms better than boys. Jeannie, can you read this aloud?’ “There was apparently a tone embedded in the text,” she notes with a chuckle. “One that I failed to hear.” Overall the transition to coeducation that first year was a smooth one. But there were hiccups, too. “There were moments of confrontation, which were unfortunate but ultimately good,” Tarkenton says. “I think some boys thought we wanted too much too soon.” That first year was punctuated by some-times heated conversations about whether there should be two council presidents, one boy and one girl. Other discussions in-volved whether the girls should adopt the boys’ traditions or start their own (or “man-ufacture traditions,” as one boy at that time

described it). These are discussions that continue to this day, though now, 25 years after girls first graduated, passions don’t run nearly so high. Five years after the Class of 1988 grabbed their diplomas, Kosoff was back at Lawrenceville, this time as a teacher and a member of the Admissions Office. Upon his return he was at once astounded by how much the campus had changed in such a short period of time. “In my senior year Lawrenceville was a boys’ school with girls in it,” Kosoff says. “But by the time I came back it was very much a coed school. The numbers weren’t yet there, but it felt so very different. It felt like what college felt like. It was so much better, so much healthier, so much more real world. It was almost impossible to believe that anyone could have argued against it.” Savino, too, returned to the campus she loved. In her case, however, it was to serve on the School’s Board of Trustees. When she was first sworn in, she was given the op-portunity to say a few words. Her remarks were brief, yet powerful. “Some of you in this room actually voted to allow me to attend this School,” she said. “I would be remiss if I didn’t say thank you.”

“There were moments of confrontation, which were unfortunate but ultimately good. I think some boys thought we wanted too much too soon.”

– Jeannie Tarkenton ’88


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Duffy’sFirstDecade

5 a.m.? Who on Earth sends business emails at 5 a.m.? But of course she’s up at that time. She wouldn’t be able to take part in her 5:45 yoga class otherwise. By the time the class is over

at 7 a.m., she is limber and ready to begin what would become one of her typically atypical days. 2013 marks Duffy’s 10th year as Lawrenceville’s Head Master, and because of this, it is sometimes difficult to recall that her arrival on campus a decade ago was noth-ing short of historic. Yes, Duffy, was the first female Head Master in Lawrenceville’s history. But her appointment was also a mere 15 years after the first group of girls graduated from the School – an illustration of just how far and how fast the School has evolved. Under Duffy’s leadership, that evolution has continued apace. She has presided over new construction, an increased endowment, and a redesigned curriculum, and spearhead-ed forward-thinking initiatives on matters of sustainabil-

ity, globalization, student leadership, and a host of other issues – all while juggling work and family. To borrow an appropriate metaphor from that early-morning yoga class, Duffy, though faced with myriad challenges, has found the flexibility to pull them all off.

ZSenior staff meetings begin at 9 a.m., and the heads of key departments are ready at the appointed hour, assembled around a conference table. There are 15 of them. Duffy meets with each of these staffers individually on a regu-lar basis, but the weekly meetings with the entire group provide a solid overview of the School as a whole. The agenda varies from one week to the next; some meetings are devoted to a single topic like, for example, technology and teaching. At other times, like this day, they serve as an opportunity to go around the table to get departmental updates. No matter what’s being discussed, however, these

By Mike Allegra

If someone somewhere figured out a way to make headmastering a 9-to-5 job, then Liz Duffy H’43 didn’t get the memo. The time stamp on her emails certainly proves this fact.

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 37

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meetings always have a common attribute: A senior staffer is appointed to watch the clock and keep this roomful of Alphas from speech-ifying. Duffy is a stickler for keeping things on time, a trait that is attributable to both Duffy’s personality and the realities of her schedule. As arranged by her assistant, Marge Sciarrot-ta, Duffy hardly ever has a moment to spare. Sciarrotta provides a debriefing of Winter Gathering. IT Director Bill Freitas projects a timeline for the School’s transition to Ve-

racross software. Dean of Residential Life Brian Daniell H’06 discusses cultural sensi-tivity matters within the Houses. And so it goes. Enrollment. Annual Fund numbers. Faculty support. Student stress. The School’s new website. All reports are duly pre-sented at a good clip, per Duffy’s wish – with some assistance from Communications Direc-tor Jennifer Szwalek, this meeting’s designat-ed timekeeper, whose occasional protests stop middling digressions in their tracks.

“You’re a good enforcer,” Duffy observes after one such Szwalek-initiated redirect. When the Head Master takes the floor, she runs down a list of issues that have been occupying her attention lately: faculty con-tracts, financial aid, a new strategic plan, the formulation of the 2013-14 budget, and the trend toward academic specialization. And it keeps going – not just the line items on her radar, but implementation strategies and timelines. As one listens, it’s hard not to no-

G�Liz�Duffy�takes�students�on�a�tour�of�the�new�and�improved�Pop�Hall.

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 39

tice how full-to-overflowing Duffy’s plate

really is.

ZEveryone on the Pop Hall tour couldn’t

help but be in a wonderful mood. And why

wouldn’t they be?

After almost a year of nonstop construc-

tion, one no longer needed to imagine where

the walls were going, the size of the windows,

the write stuffin addition to her Lawrenceville responsibilities, Liz Duffy has authored articles for several

prestigious educational journals. below is a partial list of credits:

A “Leveraging the Power of Weak Ties to Realize the Public Purpose of Private Schools”

The Trustee’s Letter, Educational Directions Incorporated, May/June 2013

A “Leadership 2.0 and Beyond”

Independent School Magazine Online, spring 2012

A “Leading a School in the Digital Age”

The Head’s Letter, Educational Directions Incorporated, November 2008

A “The Three Ps of Curriculum Redesign” Independent School Magazine, spring 2007

A “Emerging Trends in Student Leadership” The Vincent Curtis Educational Register,

67th Edition, 2007

A “A Culture of Learning”

Independent School Magazine, summer 2006


or the look of the crown molding. There were

still a couple more months to go before the

building would be habitable – construction

was still in progress, hallways were littered

with debris, and plaster dust was raining down

from where the sanders were working away –

but Pop Hall was far enough along to inspire

some well-deserved awe. Mort Fuller ’60 P’89

’01 and his wife, Sue P’89 ’01, the principal

backers on this renovation – and the couple for

whom this day’s tour was arranged – were all

smiles. Duffy was all smiles, too.

Duffy has shepherded more than her fair

share of campus construction. The Al Rashid

Health and Wellness Center is a state-of-the-

art medical facility, ready and able to handle

even the most widespread flu epidemics. The

renovated Stephan Archive is a research facil-

ity on par with those at the finest university

libraries. Carter House allows admissions re-

cruiters to cast their nets wide to find the very

best female students from around the globe.

The Getz Turf Field Complex provides an

impressive venue to show off students’ feats

of athletic prowess. The 30-acre solar field,

which generates 90 percent of the campus’

electricity, has made Lawrenceville a nation-

on the side tableLiz Duffy is a voracious reader. although she mostly reads fiction for pleasure, the

following books have helped to shape her approach to leading Lawrenceville.

A The Age of the Unthinkable (2009) by Joshua Cooper Ramo

How to thrive in an unpredictable world

A Change by Design (2009) by Tim Brown

The design thinking approach developed by IDEO

A Cosmopolitanism (2006) by Kwame Anthony Appiah

An ethical framework for a global world

A The Difference (2007) by Scott Page

Why diverse groups make better decisions

A Good to Great (2001) by Jim Collins

What distinguishes good organizations from great ones

A Hamlet’s BlackBerry (2010) by William Powers

How to balance the upsides and downsides of connectivity

A Mindset (2006) by Carol Dweck

The power of mindset in student achievement

A The Price of Privilege (2006) by Madeline Levine

How parental pressure and material advantage can make kids unhappy

A Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology (2009) by Allan Collins and

Richard Halverson

How the digital revolution can transform schooling

A The Students are Watching (1999) by Ted and Nancy Sizer

What students learn from school rituals and routines

A What the Best Teachers Do (2004) by Ken Bain

What makes outstanding teachers so effective and memorable

A Whistling Vivaldi (2010) by Claude Steele

How stereotypes affect performance

A A Whole New Mind (2005) by Daniel Pink

The importance of creativity and empathy in our conceptual age

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 41

wide leader in sustainability. All of these proj-

ects were initiated and built on Duffy’s watch.

More is to come. A renovation of The

Bath House will begin next year. A six-year

steam pipe replacement is also on the verge of

completion, but, perhaps for obvious reasons,

Duffy has yet to venture underground to re-

view its progress.

For the Pop walkthrough, CFO Wes Brooks

’71 P’03 ’05 served as tour guide, pointing out

the sights while ready to record the Fullers’

thoughts, suggestions, and questions into the

notebook tucked under his arm. Duffy’s role,

in contrast to that of the meeting she had just

departed, was less detail oriented; she and

the Fullers took in what Brooks was saying

as they chatted about their lives and families.

The trio occasionally lingered in a dusty hall-

way, their laughter echoing off the new plas-

ter while Brooks paused a few paces ahead,

waiting to introduce the architectural marvel

around the next corner.

During the tour, one of the men in a hard

hat spots Duffy and, with a wide smile extends

his hand.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, “but you don’t want

to shake my hand.”

He understands immediately. “The flu?”

Duffy nods. “I can’t shake it.” She had been

coughing into her sleeve all morning but never

as much as now, due, presumably, to the rich

fog of plaster dust. But there’s no place she

would rather be. “The Fullers are wonderful,”

42 t h e l aw r e n t i a n42 t h e l aw r e n t i a n

she says after Brooks wraps up the dog and pony show. “And I love touring new buildings.” The group, shuffling forward, views the building’s atrium, classrooms, and, as a sort of finale, the bright, airy (and nearly unrecogniz-able) lower level where, the Communications Department, The Lawrence and Olla Pod of-fices, language labs, and the IT Help Desk will be housed. Murmurs of approval can be heard all around. From there, the group tries to ignore the mud as they move outside to the Mario Plaza, nestled between Pop and Woods Memorial Hall. It is in the shape of a Harkness table. The space will provide a dual function, Duffy notes; it will serve as a pleasant gathering space for students in a central location, and, from a practical standpoint, the School will no longer have to pursue its annual, quixotic effort to grow grass there. It’s a win/win. The Harkness-shaped patio serves as a trig-

ger or sorts. Duffy has a 12:30 p.m. faculty

lunch meeting on Harkness teaching strate-

gies. The wristwatch-less Duffy asks for the

time and, upon being told it’s 12:40, says her

goodbyes, makes a promise to catch up with

the Fullers when they return from their up-

coming vacation, and strides with purpose to-

ward the Bunn Library.

“I hate being late.” Duffy notes, doing her

best to dodge mud puddles. “I haven’t been to

a Wednesday Faculty Seminar in a while be-

cause I’ve been on the road.”

ZTraveling consumes a lot of Duffy’s schedule.

This past winter, for example, she traveled to

fundraising and alumni events in Atlanta, New

York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston,

and Florida. Impressive to be sure, but she’s

still not as on-the-go as she once was; in the

years leading up to Lawrenceville’s Bicen-tennial (and the anniversary’s corresponding $200 million capital campaign), Duffy be-came a Lawrenceville telecommuter of sorts, handling a good portion of the School’s day-to-day operation while racing through airports around the world. Though Duffy’s travel schedule fosters both literal and figurative dividends, it also keeps her away from campus more often than she likes. When she is on campus, she makes up for her absences by attending as many events as possible. Wednesday Seminars are opportunities for faculty members to talk informally about teaching and learning. Challenges and tech-niques are shared, discussed, and debated. Though participation is strictly voluntary, the meeting room is still almost filled. This day’s discussion, focusing on strategies to encour-age class participation around the Harkness

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 43

table, is well under way as Duffy tiptoes in and settles in one of the few remaining chairs. “A student isn’t going to come into your class and say, ‘Oh, I’m not such a good writer, so, if it’s OK, I’m not going to write much in class.’” says Dean of Faculty Chris Cun-ningham P’14, prompting a wave of appreci-ate laughter. “Because it is not OK. The same view should be held for the student who does not volunteer in class. Class participation is an essential part of Harkness learning.” The faculty responses to Cunningham’s talking point suggest that shy students feel an inordinate amount of pressure to say some-thing meaningful around a Harkness table. As the masters kick around ideas for a remedy, Duffy dives into the conversation and ap-proaches the subject from a new angle. “When I co-taught Bioethics with [Science Master] Kelly [Nicholson Flynn], I didn’t see students pressured to say something meaningful,” she says. “But I did see them pressured to say something quickly. Those comments that ar-rived quickly were often superficial and glib.” The Harkness system, if not monitored closely, she added, can favor students who are skilled at speaking in sound bites. Find-ing ways to shift the classroom dynamic away from substance-deficient McLaughlin Group-style answers, slowing the discussion down to something less aggressive and more conversa-tional, will tease out more thoughtful respons-es, she posits. Such an environment would al-low the wallflowers to bloom.

Z“Whenever I get the chance to teach Law-renceville students, I’m impressed by their in-telligence, their enthusiasm, their idealism and their curiosity,” Duffy notes on another brisk walk, this time to the Kirby Science Center. “It’s rewarding to help students discover their passion and purpose.” With the exception of Duffy’s first year on campus – when she was still getting her feet wet – and the frenetic travel period during the School’s Bicentennial Campaign, Duffy has made a point to set aside time to teach. The Bioethics class she taught for three years with Nicholson-Flynn, certainly dovetailed nicely with her natural skill set. A graduate of Princ-eton, Duffy majored in molecular biology, but took a number of religion and ethics classes and even considered divinity school, before pursuing a joint MBA/MA in Education at Stanford.

In the class, students tackled topics of con-temporary interest by reviewing specific case studies. Duffy and Nicholson-Flynn had an almost Nostradamus-like ability to pick these case studies, by the way. For the subject of eu-thanasia, the students studied the then-obscure story of Terri Schiavo, whose life-or-death struggle would occupy countless cable news hours a few short months later. Another pro-phetic example was when students began to work on arguments for and against stem cell research; shortly thereafter, Congress decided to – very loudly – make some arguments of its own. More recently, Duffy has been co-teaching Design for Social Change with Art Master Seamus Burns ’01, a course with a goal no less ambitious than to improve the world. For one project, student groups were hand-ed a $20 bill and a packet of sticky notes and asked to use them to create something of great value. One student solution was a water bal-loon battle fundraiser; the $20 paid for bal-loons and the sticky note was the ticket for entry (battlers had to pay to play). Another group trolled Alumni Weekend asking alums for the best advice they had ever gotten from a Lawrenceville faculty member. (The sticky notes were used to record the re-sponses.) When students discovered that a large percentage of the advice was provided by Mathematics Master Tim Brown, they do-nated the $20 to the Lawrenceville Annual Fund in his name. In Kirby Science, Duffy, along with Science Master Leah Domb, is advising a group of stu-dents, helping them to prepare a project for The Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives Research Roundtable. The students still have quite a bit of work ahead of them, so Duffy is a bit taken aback to enter the room to find them crammed around a small aquar-ium on the far side of the room. As one, they scream, their voices echoing down the hall. Inside the aquarium is a snake. Inside the snake is a mouse. ”It’s like the Hunger Games!” one girl yells. Despite her science background, Duffy winces and remains safely across the room. “I focused on theoretical science,” she explains. “I wrote a computer program for my thesis, because I don’t like labs with things that move.” For their presentation, to be held at The University of Pennsylvania, the students are studying how international students accli-mate to the Lawrenceville environment. This

meeting revolved around creating focus group

questions.

There is an art to conducting a focus group;

the key, notes Duffy, is to craft questions open-

ended enough to initiate discussion but not so

wide open to prompt irrelevant digressions.

On the smart board, the students, Domb, and

Duffy dutifully post all questions that come

to mind and analyze them, picking apart each

one, one word at a time.

ZNow that Duffy’s two children are school-age

and on teams themselves, it’s not as easy for

her to attend Lawrenceville sporting events as

it once was. She does, however, find a balance

between cheering for her School and running

off to cheer her kin.

Saturdays are particularly productive to

check in on the School teams. “Especially

winter sports,” Duffy notes, as almost all of

them are played in the Lavino Field House.

There she can hop from one event to the next

and see four or five games or meets in a single

afternoon.

“I wait for a goal or something before I go.

I try to see a score or significant play before

I head off to the next game,” she says. Such

sport-hopping is not ideal, nor what she pre-

fers, but the pressure of having to be in sev-

eral places at one time has to trump Duffy’s

fandom. On the upside, her children, who of-

ten tag along, have developed a love of most

sports, which is important to Duffy, having

played three sports and earned nine letters

herself in high school.

ZAfter an on-campus dinner with her family,

there is almost certainly an event. A guest

speaker. A play. A gallery show. An alumni

reception. A meeting. For at least three or four

days a week Duffy is out somewhere after the

sun goes down, giving a speech, leading a dis-

cussion, or cultivating a donor. It should be ex-

hausting for one who has been up since 5 a.m.,

but to Duffy, it’s just part of the terrain – an

enjoyable part, apparently.

“In some ways at a boarding school the

workday never ends,” she says. ”To thrive in

such an environment, you have to embrace

that all-encompassing-ness – if that’s a word

– and love what you do. I love what I do and

look forward to continuing what I do for years

to come.”


F��Alumni�and�parents�gathered�

in�Bogota,�Colombia,�for�a��

Lawrenceville�event�hosted�

by�Flavia�and�Francisco�Diaz�

P’13’15.

A��Lawrenceville’s�Black�Alumni�and�Student�

Reception�event�was�on�February�23.�

F��A�group�of�Lawrentians�gathered�for�the�Lawrenceville�Club�of�

London�Holiday�Party�on�December�6,�2012�at�The�Only�Running�

Footman�restaurant.

A��Ana�Victoria�and�Richard�

Harris�’55�and�Jane�

and�Jason�Moore�’93�

attended�a�Lawrenceville�

event�in�Costa�Rica�

at�the�home�of�Ileana�

Guerrero�P’13’15�and�

Miguel�Gomez�P’13’15.

9Alumni�Events9

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 45

Board�Bits9

S u M M e r 2 0 1 3 45

Lawrenceville’s Board of Trustees gathered on campus in May for their third and final set of meetings for the 2012-2013 school year. Thursday morning opened early for the Property and Investment committees. The Prop-

erty Committee heard about the School’s plans for summer construction, including the sixth and final phase of our steam-line replacement project and the completion of the Pop Hall renovation. The Investment Committee received an upbeat report from our advisors from Cambridge Associ-ates. Over the past three years, the School has reached its goal of achieving market returns with approximately half of the risk of a benchmark portfolio, equating to an 8.5 percent return with volatility of 6.2 percent. Over lunch, the Student Affairs Committee heard from several Fifth Form students about their winter co-curricular activities in lieu of winter sports and their senior projects in lieu of a fifth class. Some students are working on the School’s new farm; some are designing and program-ming an original video game; and another is investigating sports medicine by assisting the athlet-ic trainers. At the same time, the Admissions & Financial Aid Committee reviewed this season’s admission statistics, the profile of our newly enrolled students, and the use of this year’s financial aid funding. Four committees met on Thursday afternoon. Academic & Faculty Affairs discussed Law-renceville’s college acceptances in light of the trends in college admissions – the pressure to apply early and the “gapping” of financial aid. The Finance Committee discussed an internal report about Moody’s new rating methodology and its meaning for the School and set objectives to further augment The School’s credit quality. The Development Committee reviewed some promising fundraising results: The Pop Hall construction fund reached its goal of $11.8 million; the Bath House & Crescent Landscape Renewal Project has reached 80 percent of its $2.5 million goal; financial aid endowment totals reached $8.5 million, and the School is on track to raise $5.8 million for The Lawrenceville Fund in FY13, a new record. Finally, the Audit Committee heard from our auditor, KPMG, about its plan for this fiscal year and reviewed The School’s tax return. Thursday evening the Senior Staff, led by Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 and Dean of Residen-tial Life Brian Daniell H’06, honored Seth Waugh ’76 and Leita Hamill H’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99, whose terms as Board president and vice president, respectively, close at the end the fiscal year. Both will remain on the Board. Also honored were retiring long-serving Board members Ron Rolfe ’63 and Chuck Murphy ’66 P’90 ’95 and Alumni Trustee David Ballard ’74. The next day Head Master Duffy led the Board through continued discussions of some of the external trends that our next strategic plan will address – globalization, specialization, and the ubiquity of mobile technology – along with plans to increase our physical and financial sustain-ability and to further realize the public purpose of a Lawrenceville education. On Friday afternoon, the Board gathered in the Bunn Library for its formal meeting, which opened with the election of our incoming officers, Tom Carter ’70 as Board president and Darrell Fitzgerald ’67 as vice president; two new trustees, Steffan Parratt P’09 ’15 and Joon Mo Kwon P’15; and new Alumni Trustee, Kathleen McMahon ’92. The board then conducted standard business, saluted the retiring trustees, and heard from Prince Turki Al-Faisal ’63 of Saudi Arabia, who was back on campus to celebrate his 50th reunion and whose message of balance and open-ness in the Middle East was warmly received. The meeting ended with an unveiling of Head Mas-ter Duffy’s portrait, which was commissioned by the trustees in honor of Duffy’s 10th anniversary

at Lawrenceville.

Wes Brooks ’71 P’03 ’05

Chief Financial & Operating Officer


Robert�Arnold� ’47�had� little�connection�with�Lawrenceville,�or�his�class,�for�most�of�his�life.�He�lived�in�Seattle�–�almost�as�far�away�geographically�as�one�could�get�in�the�continental�U.S.��But�a�visit�six�years�ago�from�the�Head�Master�and�his�friendship�with�his�financial�advisor,�Robert�Lipman��’73,� eventually� caused� him� to� realize� how� much� Lawrenceville� had��influenced�his�life.

Bob�created�a�substantial�charitable�gift�annuity�with�Lawrenceville�a�few�years�ago,�and�shortly�thereafter�returned�to�campus�for�his�very�first�visit�since�he�graduated.�Sadly,�Bob�died�recently,�but�the�remaining�proceeds�of�his�gift�annuity�will�establish�a�legacy�in�his�name�that�will�benefit�future�generations�of�Lawrentians�in�perpetuity.�Lawrenceville�is�very�grateful�to�Robert.

Tom�Tesauro� ’08,�on� the�other�hand,�grew�up� in� Lawrenceville�and�has�readily�embraced�the�campus�and�culture�his�entire�life.�The�newest�and�youngest�member�of�the�John�Cleve�Green�Society,�Tom�says,�“Lawrence-ville’s�resources�afforded�me�with�opportunities�I�never�thought�possible,�for�which�I’m�extremely�grateful.�There�are�so�many�teachers�and�coaches�that�I�owe�for�their�guidance�and�support.”�

Tom�went�on�to�Villanova�where�he�received�a�scholarship�to�play�baseball.�A�finance�major,�Tom�now�works�for�Goldman�Sachs�in�NYC,�and�recently�named�Lawrenceville�as�beneficiary�of�a�portion�of�his�life�insurance.�Tom�says� “The� least� I� could�do� is�pay� it� forward� to,� in�my�opinion,� the�best�institution�on�earth.”

It’s Never too Early - or too Lateto make a deferred gift commitment to Lawrenceville

For more information on leaving a

bequest to Lawrenceville or for other

planned giving opportunities, or if you’ve

included Lawrenceville in your will but

not yet informed the school, contact

steve Cushmore, J.D. at the Lawrenceville

office of Planned giving at 609-620-6064.

G�Robert�M.�Arnold�'47

G�Thomas�S.�Tesauro,�Jr.�'08�and�Michelle�Arduini

For the past several years, The Lawrentian

department, “Photo Finish,” asked you to

provide information on unidentified photos in

our archives.

Thanks to you, most of those photos are

now accounted for. We are very grateful.

Because of your vigilance, however, “Photo

Finish” is finished.

That doesn’t mean you can no longer win

a prize for your captioneering skills; it just

means that you are now allowed to be more

freewheeling in your replies.

“Caption This” allows you to put your

comedy writing skills to good use. The best

humorous caption for the image here (as

determined by a panel of judges) will earn a

valuable piece of Lawrentiana and, of course,

bragging rights.

Send entries to [email protected]

and please enter “The Bowl” in the subject

line. Good luck!

CAPTIONThis!

Thomas Bergwall ’82 recognized three of his fellow 1982ers in this shot:

Tim Libby and Tom McElrath are in the foreground, and Joshua Roth is the

next in line. Though Bergwall was unable to be certain of the event that

brought these boys (and the rope) together, he suspects it was an outdoor

class led by Religion Master Dr. James Sipple.

As for these happy folks on the wall around The Bowl, Danielle Ford ’00

recognized herself, and had little trouble identifying the rest of the crew. From

left, Erica Simmons (standing on the ground), Zoila Hinson, Danielle, Lauren

Rhue, and Kela Roberts. All are from the Class of 2000.

We are delighted to report that even more photo identifications have been straggling in!

Congratulations Bergwall and Ford! thank you For

sharing your laser-sharp memories. Be sure to CheCk your

mailBoxes For a well-earned pieCe oF lawrentiana!

Photograph by Aashna Mago ’13

We are delighted to report that even more photo identifications have been straggling in!

9

Photograph by Aashna Mago ’13

Student�Shot

usps no. 306-700the Lawrenceville SchoolLawrenceville, New Jersey 08648

Parents of alumni:If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us at [email protected] with his or her new address. Thank you!

LawrentianTHE

Documents

The Lawrentian - Summer 2013