bulletin - The Taft School

B U L L E T I N
Bruce and
Helena
Fifer
From classroom
to community
Essence Editor
Lynya FLoyd ’93
INAUGuration 2009
WINTER 2009

16
With Unity
of Purpose
Taft heads to the inauguration
of America’s first African-
American president.
By Greg Hawes ’85
20
From Classroom
to Community
Students make connections
as they translate knowledge
into service.
By Virginia Small
j 7:10 a.m. Students
arrive at the National Mall
in the dawn light to stake
out their spot for the
inauguration, which most
viewed on one of the many
JumboTrons. Ha i l e y Ka r c h e r ’10

26
Magazine Maven
10 Questions for
Lynya Floyd ’93, health and
relationships editor at Essence
By Julie Reiff
28
Bruce and
Helena Fifer
A teaching couple nurtures
arts at Taft.
By Tracey O’Shaughnessy
DEPARTMENTS
B U L L E T I N
Winter 2009
Volume 79, Number 2
Bulletin Staff
Director of Development:
Chris Latham
Editor: Julie Reiff
Alumni Notes: Linda Beyus
2 Letters
3 Alumni Spotlight
8 Around the Pond
Design: Good Design, LLC
www.gooddesignusa.com
Proofreader: Nina Maynard
Mail letters to:
Julie Reiff, Editor
Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100 U.S.A.
ReiffJ@TaftSchool.org
Send alumni news to:
Linda Beyus
Alumni Office
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100 U.S.A.
TaftBulletin@TaftSchool.org
Deadlines for Alumni Notes:
Spring–February 15
Summer–May 15
Fall–August 30
Winter–November 15
14 SPORT
32 From the Archives:
Tree of Knowledge
On the Cover:
Arts Department Chair Bruce
Fifer and acting teacher
Helena Fifer. Ye e-Fu n Yin
(See page 28.)
Send address corrections to:
Sally Membrino
Alumni Records
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100 U.S.A.
TaftRhino@TaftSchool.org
1.860.945.7777
www.TaftAlumni.com
The Taft Bulletin (ISSN 0148-0855) is
published quarterly, in February, May,
August and November, by The Taft School,
110 Woodbury Road, Watertown, CT 06795-
2100, and is distributed free of charge to
alumni, parents, grandparents and friends
of the school. All rights reserved.
This magazine is printed on 100%
recycled paper. (Please see page 2
for more information.)
TAFT ON THE WEB
Find a friend’s address or look
up back issues of the Bulletin
at www.TaftAlumni.com
For more campus news and
events, including admissions
information, visit www.TaftSchool.org
What happened at this
afternoon’s game
Visit www.TaftSchool.org/Sports
Don’t forget you can shop online at
www.TaftStore.com 800.995.8238
or 860.945.7736

L E T T E R S
From the Editor
What did you do with your last issue of the
Bulletin Is it on your coffee table Did you give
it to someone else Did you recycle it Any one
of those options certainly makes me happy as
an editor, and if you recycled your copy (after
reading it, of course) there’s a chance some
tiny part of it made it into this issue.
You may, in fact, have already noticed
something different about this particular
Bulletin. The paper isn’t quite as shiny, or perhaps
quite as white as the magazine you are
used to receiving four times each year, but the
trade-offs, we think, are more than worth it.
For the first time, this issue is printed
on 100 percent postconsumer recycled paper.
And we’ve traded our UV coating for a low
VOC varnish, too.
Not only is the paper recycled but the
company that makes it also uses emission-free
Love it Hate it
Read it Tell us!
We’d love to hear what you think about
the stories in this Bulletin. We may
edit your letters for length, clarity and
content, but please write!
Julie Reiff, editor
Taft Bulletin
110 Woodbury Road
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
or ReiffJ@TaftSchool.org
wind power (see details at right). And the company
printing this issue buys carbon offsets,
providing critical financial support to help get
renewable energy projects up and running.
So all told, by the end of the year, we’ll
have saved the equivalent of 1,750 trees, or
three trees for each current student…not to
mention the water saved, greenhouse gases
prevented and oil unused. As importantly,
this choice comes at a time when the entire
community is making renewed efforts to reduce
our environmental impact.
In the midst of a major construction
project (see “Serving up space at the heart
of the school” Summer 2008) that is LEED
certified (see page 9), students are taking
steps of their own, joining the Green Schools
Alliance Green Cup Challenge (more on
that in future issues) and purchasing solar
panels as a class gift.
On their own, none of these choices
may be earth shattering, but together, they
just might be, well, earth saving.
—Julie Reiff
Correction
In the Davis Scholars article [Fall 2008]
we mistakenly identified Jenny Jin ’09 as
an ASSIST student during her first year at
Taft. In fact, Ferdie Wandelt ’66 met Jenny
while traveling in Beijing with ASSIST, but
she came to Taft on a one-year Taft-funded
program. Our apologies for the error.
The savings below are achieved when
postconsumer recycled fiber is used in place
of virgin fiber. This issue of the Taft Bulletin
uses 10,747.79 pounds of paper that is
100% postconsumer recycled.
103.18 trees preserved for
the future
297.93 lbs waterborne waste
not created
43,227 gallons wastewater
flow saved
4,849 lbs solid waste not
generated
9,549 lbs net greenhouse
gases prevented
73,084,968 BTUs energy
not consumed
Savings from the use of emission-free
wind-generated electricity:
4,961 lbs air emissions
not generated
Displaces this amount of fossil fuel:
2 barrels crude oil unused
966 cubic feet natural
gas unused
In other words our savings from the use of
wind-generated electricity are equivalent to:
not driving 5,374 miles
OR
planting 335 trees
NativeEnergy Certificate: Villanti & Sons, Printers, Inc. is fighting global
warming by supporting the Stanton Landfill Gas project, acquiring 2,386,000
kWh of renewable energy credits in 2008.
Mohawk Fine Papers is a national leader in the support of renewable energy
projects and 100% of the electricity used by Mohawk is matched with Green-e
certified Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from windpower projects.
Trivia
The school’s third headmaster was formerly a dean
at what New England college (Please name the
headmaster as well as the college.) A Taft stadium
blanket will be sent to the winner, whose name
will be drawn from all correct entries received.
The editor made an executive decision to award the
previous prize to Stewart Graff ’25, who not only
identified the Warren House but was also the only
respondent (if not the only alum) to have actually
been in the building. To be fair, all other correct
responses will be included in this drawing.
2 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Rising to the Challenge
When Lisa Firestone ’85 was playing
ice hockey at Princeton, her team
started teaching girls from Harlem how
to skate on an outdoor rink in Central
Park, and occasionally bringing them
to Princeton as well.
When Lisa and a former teammate
found themselves in L.A. a few years later,
they decided to do it again. And so Lisa
began her 18-year association with the
Challengers Boys and Girls Clubs. They
skated at local rinks when they could get
the ice time, and played roller hockey in
the parking lots when they couldn’t.
Although she still plays occasionally,
Lisa no longer coaches. Instead, she has
been a board member for the last ten years,
the last three as treasurer. Challengers
president Corey Dantzler calls Lisa “one
of our most active board members.”
Challengers got its start in the
wake of the Watts Riots in the 1960s.
Founder Lou Dantzler, Corey’s father,
wanted to help kids build their selfesteem
and give them an alternative
to gangs. The group has been called
“the oasis of south central L.A.” Past
supporters have included Shaquille
O’Neal, Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell,
Barbara Walters and George W. Bush
Each year two Challengers teens
receive scholarships for the academic
program at Taft Summer School, supported
by the Firestone Foundation,
giving them an opportunity to meet
and interact with teens from all over the
world and to learn in a challenging but
supportive atmosphere.
Challengers has connected with A
Better Chance to help place their students
in boarding school. One of the
first boys to attend Taft Summer School
is now at Berkshire.
Ferdie Wandelt ’66 really helped
make this happen, explains Lisa. “He
invited Lou Dantzler out for the Taft
Today program and helped build the
connection between the two organizations.
We are lucky to have him at
Taft. He was immediately interested
and embraced this connection. This
program is really an extension of our
school motto.” Ferdie now serves on
the Challengers board as well.
“Lisa is the one who got that started,”
says Ferdie, and it is clear that these two
inspire each other to new levels of service
for these kids. “The work she does, and
what Challengers does is significant.”
Challengers receives generous support
from the Firestone Foundation
as a result of Lisa’s dedication, but she
also donates funds personally in addition
to her time, “often getting to know
individual members and staff, helping
them achieve their goals and dreams,”
Challengers acknowledges.
Lisa recently became vice president of
investor relations at Transmedia Capital.
Having been the treasurer for her family
foundation for so long, she says she found
the transition easy. Lisa is also a freelance
and screen writer and serves as a member
of Taft’s board of trustees and as a trustee
for the African Wildlife Foundation.
If you would like to learn more about
Challengers, please visit www.cbgcla.org.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 3

Nonprofit Start
Fresh out of college, Supriya Balsekar
’04 is assistant program director for the
Bronx, New York, nonprofit CitySquash,
where she focuses on development,
communications and strategic planning.
She also tutors, coaches squash and runs
CitySquash’s mentoring program.
“While my peers have found
themselves stuck at the bottom of the
totem pole, yearning to add value and
flex their intellectual muscles,” she
told www.onPhilanthropy.com, “I have
found myself playing a pivotal role in
ushering the organization from childhood
into maturity, and gained many
of the hard-skills required to start and
run a business. At one point, while
evaluating the organization’s financial
health and readiness for the new
challenges posed by the economy, it
really hit me—that I held a significant
stake in the organization and that I,
at 23, was actually going to affect our
business practices and our students.”
She also realized that their staff of
eight 20-somethings serve as a beacon
of light in the community. “‘CitySquash
is a miracle in the middle of the Bronx,’
one parent told me on my first day,
‘Thank you for coming to us.’ In that
moment, I felt powerful beyond belief.
I am confident that when I start
at business school, I will bring a wealth
of knowledge, experience and perspective
to the table. For young people like
myself, working at a social service organization
might not only be a good thing
to do, but a very smart thing to do.”
Supriya earned a B.A. with honors
in economics and a citation in Mandarin
Chinese from Harvard College in 2008.
She was the captain of the varsity
women’s squash team there and a threetime
All-American and All-Ivy League
selection. She represented the Indian
national squash team five times. Supriya
grew up in Mumbai, India, and now
lives in Manhattan.
b Supriya Balsekar ’04 and one of her
CitySquash students on campus last fall.
CitySquash players came to campus most
Sundays during the winter to play on Taft’s
courts. Pe t e r Fr e w ’75
Play for Prevention
“Football” fever has gripped KwaZulu-
Natal, South Africa, as the countdown
is on for the World Cup in 2010.
Located in the southeast part of South
Africa—home of the Zulu kingdom—
KwaZulu-Natal was chosen as a starting
place for Africaid’s Whizzkids United,
because it also has one of the highest
new infection rates of HIV among
young people anywhere in the world.
A native of Durban, the largest city
in the province, Paul Kelly ’01 recently
took up a full-time position at WhizzKids
as football development manager.
“I have a passion for football and
for young people,” says Paul, “so this
seemed like a fantastic program to be
part of. I started volunteering for them
at first. We use football as a medium to
teach HIV/AIDS education life skills
to children. My responsibility now is
to manage the roll out of our program
into each of the 11 districts in KwaZulu-
Natal and to find potential sponsors for
our activities. We have a presence in
Ghana and Uganda and hope to start up
in England early next year.”
The United Nations estimates
that 280,000 children aged 0–14 in
South Africa are living with HIV.
Nearly 13 percent young women aged
15–24 are infected, and 18 percent of
the general population.
Started in 2006, the original goal
was to harness children’s energy and
direct it into a game of football as opposed
to running away onto the streets.
The boys responded well to having a few
men to play football with who acted as
positive role models, explains founder
4 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Discussing with the Dalai Lama
Marcus McGilvray. “These kids came
from extremely difficult backgrounds,
where family structure is often void,
poverty is rife, opportunities are scarce
and where HIV prevention hung low
on their daily list of priorities.”
In an attempt to make the time
spent with the kids even more productive
WhizzKids began life-skills
training based around HIV prevention
before each football game, to developing
ways to teach football and relate
it to life skills so that they’d enjoy the
learning experience.
More than 3,000 kids have completed
the Life Skills course to date.
One principal reported 100 percent
Project Happiness, a feature-length
documentary, follows a senior highschool
class from Mount Madonna
School near Watsonville, California,
on a journey to discover the true nature
of human happiness. Joining
them on this quest are students from
the Tibetan Children’s Village in
Dharamsala, India, and students from
the Dominion Heritage Academy in
Jos, Nigeria.
“The students began their journey,”
explains Mount Madonna leader
Ward Mailliard ’65, who has deep connections
to India (see Fall 2006 Taft
Bulletin), “by reading the Dalai Lama’s
book, Ethics for the New Millennium, a
secular and nonreligious text that empowers
young people to reflect on the
connection between the choices they
make and happiness in their lives.
Using email, blogs and video cameras,
the students from three continents
exchanged their cultural perspectives.
Over seven months, students shared
personal stories, opinions and challenges,
which created the foundation
for lifelong friendships.”
The conversation also extended
school attendance in kids who completed
the initial 20 hours WhizzKids
Life Skills. The same school reported
more than 150 new pupils enrolled at
the school because their parents wanted
to be certain that their kids would
take part in the WhizzKids program.
“Life in South Africa is good,”
adds Paul, who graduated from the
University of Richmond, Virginia. “I
have been back three years and have reluctantly
given up the football boots as
a full-time professional player, although
I still play part-time semi-professionally
for Rangers Football Club.”
To learn more, visit
www.whizzkidsunited.org.
to others outside these communities
when students interviewed celebrities
and visionaries from other cultures, including
actor Richard Gere, filmmaker
George Lucas, musician Adam Yauch,
former President of India Abdul Kalam
and Sobonfu Some, keeper of African
Indigenous wisdom, about their definition
of lasting happiness.
Following many months of reflection
and cross-cultural conversation,
the American students traveled by
plane, train and 4WD to India to connect
for the first time face-to-face with
their counterparts. As a community,
they continued to test their theories,
ask hard questions and prepare for the
meeting of a lifetime ... a private interview
with the author of their text,
the 14th Dalai Lama.
Using an experiential curriculum
together with digital media, Project
Happiness inspires teens to explore the
relationship between their choices and
happiness, and to discover a new sense
of awareness and compassion for themselves,
and the world around them.
Project Happiness hopes to expand
the success of the program to
500 schools and 50,000 students
worldwide, as well as to support their
Nigerian school, Creative Minds
International Academy.
Ward Mailliard, senior teacher
and one of the founders of the
school, also created the Mount
Madonna School Government in
Action Program to provide students
with deeper understanding of government
and a more accurate and
complete picture of those who devote
their lives and intellects to creating
a better and more sustainable future.
In addition, he created the Values in
American Thought curriculum, based
on Bill Moyers’ A World of Ideas.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 5

Up to the Task
m Commander Cindy Thebaud ’81, second from left, with other APS participants in
Lagos, Nigeria.
Captain Cindy Thebaud ’81 took command
recently of one of the Navy’s busiest
task forces, “the fleet’s ‘banner mission
responsible for Western and Central
Africa,” reported the Stars and Stripes.
Based out of Naples, Italy, Thebaud
serves as commodore of Destroyer
Squadron Six Zero and as commander
of Africa Partnership Station, or APS.
A destroyer squadron, or
DESRON, has about half a dozen
“combatant” ships, she explains, and as
commodore, she is responsible for the
operational training, readiness and employment
of those ships.
APS currently encompasses a region
from Cape Verde and Senegal in
the north to Angola in the south. “The
maritime security challenges throughout
the region are common: illegal
fishing, illegal trafficking (drugs, humans,
etc.), piracy and high-seas crime,
and so forth,” she says. “Our common
goal is to strengthen Africa’s maritime
capabilities against these global threats,
which is seeing Africa lose nearly $1
billion a year through smuggling, human
trafficking, oil bunkering and
other such activities.
“We also work closely with
other government agencies and departments,”
she adds, “as well as some
nongovernment organizations. The
four main areas of focus are helping
to build maritime professionals, maritime
infrastructure, maritime domain
awareness and maritime response capability.
Partnering across the spectrum,
we address regional concerns, build on
partners’ expertise, and coordinate and
facilitate with other ongoing efforts.”
The original staff for the deployment
included members from
11 nations—5 African and 6 Euro-
Atlantic. They taught courses to more
than 1,500 students from 15 nations
in more than 15 subjects including
small boat operations, port security,
maritime law, engineering and general
shipboard maintenance and repair.
“It’s a pretty broad mission and undertaking,”
says Thebaud. “Everything
we do is at the behest of the partner
nations in Africa, and with the concurrence
and support of the U.S.
ambassador in that country.
She recently spent approximately 2
months of a 6-month deployment doing
APS work, in Cape Verde, Nigeria,
Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and
then Gabon. “In all those locations,
we assisted with engineering and shipboard
maintenance and repair—and
training thereon—operations center
development, maritime law enforcement
and response capabilities and
concepts. We spent about a week in
each location. Our training and assistance
is tailored to the needs and
desires of the specific Navy or Coast
Guard we’re working with.”
In November, she headed to
Angola, where they were only the
second U.S. Navy ship to visit in
over 30 years. They continued on to
São Tomé; Lome, Togo; and Dakar,
Senegal; before finally heading home
to Norfolk, Virginia.
“When I first arrived,” she adds,
“a team of SeaBees was just finishing
up the renovation of two medical clinics,
a school and a road into one of
the clinics in Monrovia, Liberia. They
were doing the work along with members
of the new construction company
that is part of the new Armed Forces
of Liberia. So, in addition to the community
outreach it provided, it was
also a multi-month training session for
the Liberian personnel as they learned
how to plan, implement and execute
civil-engineering projects. I attended
the ribbon cutting of one of the clinics
in Monrovia; it was amazing not only
how appreciative the local community
was of the work, but also how true
friendships had been built between the
SeaBees and the Liberians they were
training. Pretty amazing.”
6 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Penelope Ayers: A Memoir
By Amy Julia Truesdell Becker ’94
Xlibris, 2008
Penelope Ayers is a memoir about
a beautiful, gracious, lonely New
Orleanian who discovers one
February morning that she has cancer.
Penny’s life to this point has included
an alcoholic husband, divorce, depression,
and raising two boys on her
own. And yet this crisis prompts her
to reach out for help. Three generations
of her fractured, colorful family
respond, and in so doing, they all experience
grace and healing.
“This is a true story,” writes
Becker, “although most of the characters’
names have been changed, and
some details have been compressed.
The story takes place in 2002 and
2003, and the first drafts of the book
were completed before Hurricane
Katrina devastated New Orleans and
changed the city forever.”
In Print
Jamaica, A Photographic Journey Through the Island of
Wood and Water
By Eladio Fernandez ’85
www.eladiofernandez.com
Eladio Fernandez is a conservation
photographer and a naturalist. He
worked as a business manager for
more than 13 years until his love
for nature and photography became
a full-time job. He has one of the
largest image banks on the last natural
landscapes, as well as the fauna
and flora of the Greater Antilles.
His photographs have appeared
in several publications, including
the “Wildlife as Canon Sees It” ad
campaign for National Geographic,
Condor, Nature Conservancy and
Living Bird.
He coauthored Birds of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti
(Princeton University Press) and
is also the author of Hispaniola: A
Photographic Journey through Island
Biodiversity (Harvard University Press,
2007) and Orchids of Dominican
Republic and Haiti (Curva Vertical
Press, 2007). He cofounded the
Sociedad Ornitológica Hispaniola to
preserve the birds of Hispaniola and
their natural habitats.
The Black Woman’s Guide to Healthy Living:
The Best Advice for Body, Mind + Spirit in Your 20s,
30s, 40s, 50s & Beyond
By Essence Magazine Editors [Lynya Floyd ’93, health editor]
Little, Brown & Company, 2009
From the African-American community’s
trusted authority, Essence
Guide to Healthy Living is an interactive
manual designed to help
black women care for their bodies,
minds and spirits. Covering both
major health issues such as diabetes
and heart disease and tackling
everyday concerns from weight loss
to balancing work and life, this
handy guide has a reader-friendly
tone, actionable service and chapters
packed with checklists, inspiring
real-life examples, space for journal
entries and worksheets for readers
to execute their own personal wellness
plans. Developed with expert
advice from leading physicians,
nutritionists, fitness instructors,
psychologists, spiritual gurus and
other healthcare experts, Essence
Guide to Healthy Living is designed
to help black women lead healthier
and better lives. This guide includes:
step-by-step exercise plans; guidance
for achieving emotional balance;
tips for enjoying a healthy sex life;
listing and explanation of medical
tests; and inspiring real-life weightloss
success stories.
In Quest of Tolstoy
Hugh McLean ’42
Academic Studies Press, 2008
Leo Tolstoy has held the attention
of mankind for well over a century.
A supremely talented artist, whose
novels and short stories continue to
entrance readers all over the world,
he was at the same time a fearless
moral philosopher who explored and
challenged the fundamental bases of
human society—political, economic,
legal and cultural. Hugh McLean,
professor emeritus of Russian literature
at the University of California,
Berkeley, has been studying and
writing about Tolstoy for many
years. In these essays he investigates
some of the numerous puzzles and
paradoxes in the Tolstoyan heritage,
engaging both with Tolstoy the artist,
author of those incomparable
novels, and Tolstoy the thinker,
who, from his impregnable outpost
at Yasnaya Polyana, questioned the
received ideas and beliefs of the
whole civilized world. In two concluding
essays, “Tolstoy beyond
Tolstoy,” McLean deals with the
impact of Tolstoy on such diverse
figures as Ernest Hemingway and
Isaiah Berlin.
McLean is the author of Nikolai
Leskov, the Man and His Art, and
editor of In the Shade of the Giant:
Essays on Tolstoy.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 7

For the latest news
on campus events,
please visit
www.TaftSchool.org.
Around the pond
by Sam Routhier
b Community Service Day Director
Roberto d’Erizans, Bess Lovern ’11, Annie
Oppenheim ’11, Holly Lagasse ‘09, Jenny
Janeck ’11, Caroline O’Neill ’11, Tim
Cronin ’10 and Max Frew ’10 (in front)
get ready to do a little yard work. For
more on community service activities, visit
www.TaftSchool.org/non. Ye e-Fu n Yin
Non ut sibi at its finest
Coordinators saw some unique trends to get longer-term projects rolling.”
with this year’s annual Community Once again, on October 20, the
Service Day event. Director Roberto entire Taft community mobilized to act
d’Erizans says he was struck by how the out the school motto, Not to be served
nation’s current economic struggles put but to serve, during the school’s 13th
service at a higher premium.
annual Community Service Day. Led
“The needs of our community by d’Erizans, teachers Linda Chandler,
were more apparent than ever,” he says. Baba Frew, and Andi Orben, as
“The worried tone of the community well as student coordinators Giovana
leaders that run these organizations Espejo ’09, Amy Brownstein ’09, and
meant that our work was critically Catie Moore ’09, this year’s event
important. Not only did Taft provide involved 58 projects, approximately
our face-to-face support during that 5,200 man-hours, and journeys as far
day, but we also provided supplies as Hartford and Bridgeport. Meeting
the needs and desires of all parties required
huge coordination.
“Taft is trying a new approach to
volunteering in general,” says Espejo,
who saw how the day relates to the
greater presence of service in the Taft
community. “We are trying to give
student volunteers public outlets to
discuss their work, and everyone is trying
to communicate that volunteering
is not for just one type of person but
that it is universal.”
The projects that involved the
highest number of Taft students were
exchanges among local schools. More
than a hundred elementary school students
came to Taft for an on-campus
program that included Japanese culture,
math, and “Physics Fun,” as well
as an athletic clinic in basketball, soccer,
volleyball and the climbing wall.
Conversely, dozens of Taft students
and faculty went out to local
elementary schools Judson, Polk,
and John Trumbull to interact with
students there, leading workshops,
games and taking part in recess—
long held in our collective nostalgia.
Yet these programs only scratch the
surface of the impact that CSD has
on the local area.
8 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Hardhat Headlines: TAKING THE LEED
The second in a series of updates on campus construction
The renovations to the west end of
Horace Dutton Taft Hall, and the new
dining hall addition especially, presented
the school a unique opportunity to
reduce its environmental impact.
To advise architects and builders in
the process of “greening,” the U.S. Green
Building Council created the Leadership
in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) certification
process. A registered project
checklist helps estimate,
based on a system of points
assigned to such areas as sustainable
sites, water efficiency, energy and
atmosphere, materials and resources, and
indoor environmental quality, what level
of certification a project might achieve.
The school worked closely with
architects at Gund Partnership in the
course of design, using LEED checklists
to inform the decision-making process.
“Early on in the process we sat around
a table,” says project manager Lou
Cherichetti, “looking at the checklists and
started asking ‘Can we do this practically
financially What’s most important’ ”
Some of the ways the project will
minimize environmental impact include
recycling 80 percent of construction
waste, using reusable materials for floors
and walls, and providing bike racks near
the entrance and special parking for a
hybrid vehicle. “They also allot points
for being within a quarter mile of public
transportation,” says Cherichetti, but
it’s slightly more than that to the public
bus stop on North Street if you exit
HDT on the west side.
“Among the areas where we reached,”
he adds, “was in adding a cistern to collect
rainwater for use in toilets, and reducing
the ‘heat island’ using pavers in the courtyard
instead of asphalt, which also helps
runoff percolate through the surface.
We’re also using wood products, including
paneling, from renewable sources.”
By estimating the number of points
a project will be credited at various stages
of construction, planners predict the
HDT project will achieve LEED Silver
at the very least, and possibly gold.
“This is a major accomplishment,”
adds Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78,
“particularly when you consider that
Promoting Open
Minds—FONTS
Students are at the center of campus
initiatives exploring philosophy and
religion, and several clubs exist on
campus under religious banners, including
the Christian group FOCUS
and the Jewish Student Organization,
or JSO. Additionally, a new forum is
called FONTS, or the Fellowship of
Non-Theistic Students. With their
grassroots drive toward open dialogue,
FONTS has brought religious
discussion into the forefront of the
Taft consciousness.
Ben Zucker ’09 and Keith Culkin
’09 began the club in the fall of 2007
as an opportunity “for atheists, agnostics
and anyone else not sure about
religion to have casual discussion.”
Membership in the group is open,
and they aim for weekly, hourlong
meetings. Early on, they discussed
much of the project involves renovating
a building that goes back to 1912, as
well as a facility that is still in constant
use. We face challenges here not seen in
completely new construction. But there
was never a question about whether we
would build a LEED-certified building.
It is very important for us as a school.”
Club Spotlight
topics ranging from the existence of
God to religious freedom in the U.S.
The group has found more success
recently with an online discussion
board, where any student or faculty
member can post thoughts on a range
of topics. In fact, FOCUS head Jessica
Yu ’09 is a frequent contributor to the
FONTS forum. While some have
responded negatively to the group’s
unorthodox mantra, the founders
have maturely taken those views into
account, and allow all discussion topics
on the forum and in meetings.
“On the forum, atheists, agnostics,
Christians, Muslims, Jews and
people of all creeds—without faculty
oversight—intelligently, meaningfully,
and for the most part politely, debate
innumerable topics relating to God,
faith, and religion,” Zucker says.
Ta f t An n u a l
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 9

Around the pond
WISE-ing to the occasion
m Amy Brownstein ’09, center front, organized a 5k on campus to raise money for
the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research, a school in Muhulu
Bay, Kenya. Co u r t e s y o f La r ry Br o w n s t e i n ’74
Amy Brownstein ’09 found her interest
in women’s rights piqued at last summer’s
Youth Assembly at the United
Nations. She heard Andy Cunningham,
a bright, talented activist, speak about
WISER, or the Women’s Institute for
Secondary Education and Research,
a school in Muhulu Bay, Kenya, that
focuses on empowering African women
to beat the HIV crisis. Last fall,
Brownstein has started a WISER group
at Taft, with the goal of raising money
and awareness of this cause. The group
has caught a wide following due to having
Cunningham speak at Taft, as well
as the 5K run that Brownstein and her
group coordinated and that raised $335
toward WISER’s benefit.
Lessons from a Civil War
With student groups that raise consciousness
of global conflict, guest speakers school in his home village of Gurion.
Slavery. He is now working to build a
discussing a range of issues relevant to a “As a slave, I was deprived of an education,”
he told a captive audience. “There
multicultural citizenry and an academic
department devoted to discussing global is no more strategic help I can get for the
service and scholarship, the energy for developing
dialogue and understanding is education for their children.” Donations
people of my hometown than to invest in
palpable. A lap of the campus will show any for the school come from Americans,
visitor that Taft is a more global and diverse South Sudanese, and Darfurians, in a
community than ever. In line with this goal, symbolic gesture toward unity among
and in celebration of the 60th anniversary
of the United Nations’ Declaration of country apart.
the warring factions that have torn the
Human Rights, Taft brought guest speaker Bok stayed at Taft for the entire
Francis Bok to campus in November. day and held a follow-up session in the
Francis Bok is from the Sudan, where faculty room that evening, which more
he experienced decades of civil war firsthand.
In 1986, at age 7, conflict between After his visit, students and faculty alike
than 50 students and faculty attended.
Darfurians and South Sudanese led to discussed the implications of Bok’s story
his abduction into slavery, in which he and his efforts.
remained for ten years. Since he escaped Having Francis Bok come to speak
slavery and came to the United States, he was a highlight of a wide array of activities
relating to Taft’s global consciousness.
has campaigned as an abolitionist and as
a proponent of reconciliation between Other guest speakers in the fall included
the warring tribes of Sudan.
Andy Cunningham of WISER, an organization
to promote women’s rights
In 2000, he became the first freed
slave to address the Senate Committee and education in Kenya, and Steven
on Foreign Relations, and in 2003 he Donaldson, a human rights photographer
released his autobiography, Escape from who spoke passionately about injustices
m Dan Henry ’09 during a class with former
Sudanese slave Francis Bok. Ye e-Fu n Yin
in our world. A new publication, Global
Journal, also debuted, in which students
write interviews, essays, opinion pieces
and narratives on globally related items.
“The student body is way more informed
about global issues now than
ever before,” says Annabel Smith, head
of the Global Scholarship and Service
Department (see page 20), “partially due
to the internet, partially due to our diverse
community and definitely due to
our ability to engage all of these pieces
at the same time. The Global Journal
attempts to create outlets for communicating
this engagement.”
10 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

The Breakfast Club
One element of being a senior at Taft
is taking ownership of one’s education.
With senior projects, independent
research theses and a wide array of elective
courses to select, seniors can apply
creativity and passion to the close of
their time in Watertown. With this in
mind, senior Will Sayre spent his fall
directing a theater-in-the-round production
of the 1980s film classic The
Breakfast Club.
And there was ample support for
Sayre to follow his idea. Senior Dean
Jack Kenerson ’82 readily approved the
project, the Arts Department provided
funding, video teacher Rick Doyle led
the crew who built the set and acting
teacher Helena Fifer gave her input to
the performers.
Sayre cast the play himself and
looked to the Taft Improv group as well as
the theater club, Masque and Dagger, for
talented, passionate actors. He cast head
monitor Bob Vulfov as “The Criminal,”
Juliet Ourisman as “The Princess,” Keith
Culkin as “The Brain,” Kathy Demmon
as “The Basket Case,” Ben Zucker as
“The Principal,” and Jared Knowlton ’10
(the only nonsenior) as “The Athlete.”
The seven of them worked each
afternoon on blocking, delivery
and adjusting the cinematic version
of the story to the stage.
Sayre had to alter the script to
unfold in only one room, and
Vulfov had to change the actions
of his character to be more
movement-oriented, as “The
Criminal” spends most of the
movie sitting down.
“I loved having it be a
student-run production,”
said Sayre. “The fact that it
was our show made it so that
we could really take ownership
of how to act it out,
how to adjust the lighting,
and how to be most effective
in delivering our lines.
Furthermore, since the play
is about high school, we all
really identified with the
content and were able to
make it our own.”
The Breakfast Club filled the
Black Box for three performances, with
Friday’s opening show reserved for seniors,
followed by a class feed.
m Senior Will Sayre directed the ’80s
classic as an Independent Studies Project
last fall. Po s t e r a n d p h o t o b y An d r e Li ’11
Cum Laude inductees
Fourteen members of Taft’s senior class
were inducted into the Cum Laude society
in the fall, based on their academic
records from the previous two years.
The students were Sarah Albert, Wells
Andres, Palm Harinsuit, John Lombard,
Querino Maia, Bobby Manfreda, Mike
Notaro, Robin Oh, Diana Saverin,
Bennett Siegel, M Sutuntivorakoon,
Nick Tyson, Hannah Vazquez, and Ben
Zucker. The inductees represent the top
8.1% of the class, explains Academic
Dean Jon Willson ’82, with weighted
averages that ranged from 5.145 to
5.583 for those years. “And in contrast
to last year’s all-female group, they were
mostly boys.”
Ye e-Fu n Yin
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 11

Around the pond
“Working” for the weekend
Director Rick Doyle calls the fall
musical, Working, one of “the best
musicals you probably have never
heard of.” An ensemble show that
highlights the experiences of different
working Americans of various social
classes and professions, each vignette
had a different musical number, requiring
large-scale dance and singing
rehearsals. According to actor Nick
Tyson ’09, the dance numbers were
the most challenging: “Not everyone
in the cast was a trained dancer so we
had to work extra hard to make sure
that the dance numbers were really
good. And in the end, they turned
out great!” Working was the hit of
Parents’ Weekend.
c Brianna Ong ’09 dances away the
blues in the fall musical based on
Studs Terkel’s oral history of working
life. Pet e r Fr e w ’75
Rallying for
school spirit
Taft gathered for the annual Big Red
Rally in November, a spirit-injected
night to prepare for Hotchkiss Day.
This year’s rally was a bit different
than in recent years, with classes the
next day and the dining hall split.
However, those factors did not inhibit
the wonderful spirit of the
night. Some highlights included a
faculty skit that featured a harmonicaplaying
headmaster, dancing teachers,
and some great musical numbers,
videos by the school monitors, a performance
by the step team, a bonfire
on the pond, and a dining hall filled
with red decorations during dinner.
Said senior Liesl Morris, “I was on a
high the whole night, it really felt like
the school was coming together.”
Actual twins Jan and Anna Stransky
’10 catch the spirit on Twin Day.
Ju l i e Fo o t e ’09
m Taft Jazz Band performs in Walker Hall after the annual Service of Lessons and Carols,
the sixth in the series of Walker Hall concerts. Pe t e r Fr e w ’75
Music For a While
This year’s Walker Hall Concert
Series has been exceptionally popular.
In October, the Harold Zinno Jazz
Orchestra played to a full house. The
18-piece jazz ensemble wowed the audience,
and inspired them to move the
chairs out of the hall and start dancing
by the end of the show. Zinno himself is
an adjunct teacher of saxophone at Taft,
and this was the first time his group has
performed at Walker Hall. Later that
month, Four Flutists from around the
World came to perform. They were led
by Sergio Pallottelli, adjunct teacher of
flute at Taft, and the performance occurred
the night before their Carnegie
Hall debut! December saw jazz trio
Bill Mays and the Inventions come to
Walker Hall after an afternoon workshop
with Taft’s jazz band. The annual
holiday Service of Lessons and Carols
followed two weeks later, held at the
Watertown Congregational Church,
due to the large numbers that flock
to this traditional celebration—from
campus as well as the local community.
The service was followed again this year
with a performance of Taft’s Jazz Band
in neighboring Walker Hall—at which
dancing was highly encouraged.
12 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Math Online
m Robin Oh ’09 gives a 20-minute presentation on the limits of sequences for his
independent course in Real Analysis. Jul i e Re i f f
Brian Change ’10 and Robin Oh ’09
did independent coursework in math
in the fall, having already run through
the department’s offerings. The arrival
of online courses has allowed students
to go well beyond traditional highschool
curriculum.
“If Advanced Placement BC
Calculus is the equivalent of a college
freshman course, and our multivariable
calculus and linear algebra course
a typical sophomore course,” explains
Math Department chair Al Reiff ’80,
“then what Robin and Brian are doing is
roughly at the third-year college level.”
John Piacenza, who advises both
students in their work, asked each to take
one or two concepts they found interesting
in their courses so far and present
them to an audience in a 20-minute session
and to open it for questions.
Brian, who completed multivariable
calculus as a mid, took a course in
Number Theory, which is the study of
integers. He presented several proofs
that particular multivariable equations
did not have solutions among
the integers.
Robin, who took a course in Real
Analysis, gave a presentation on limits
of sequences.
“There was a huge blossoming in
mathematical thought in the century
after Newton and Leibnitz laid the
groundwork for what we call calculus,”
explains Piacenza. “Mathematicians began
using these ideas in unanticipated
ways. But there were skeptics who worried
about the soundness of working
with numbers that have no real size, as
quantities get infinitesimally smaller,
close to zero, and almost vanish. There
was this need to put calculus on more
solid ground, and that’s what Real
Analysis does. It was clear that calculus
worked, but now they tried to explain
why it works, and when it won’t.”
Ye e-Fu n Yin
Gordie Day
On the evening of September 16, 2004,
Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr. (“Gordie”) and
26 other fraternity pledges around a
bonfire were “encouraged” to drink
four “handles” (1.75 liter bottles) of
whiskey and six (1.5 liter) bottles of
wine in 30 minutes. They were told,
“No one is leaving until this is all
gone.” When the group returned to
the fraternity house, Gordie was highly
intoxicated and stopped drinking. He
was placed on a couch to “sleep it off.”
He was found dead the next morning.
Gordie was the brother of Lily
Lanahan ’08, and this happened during
her freshman year at Taft. Since then
she and her family have been spreading
alcohol awareness through the Gordie
Foundation’s Circle of Trust to educate
students about the dangers of alcohol
abuse, peer pressure, hazing, and their
many adverse side effects. There are
hundreds of chapters of the Circle of
Trust all across the nation.
On October 22 students celebrated
National Gordie Day to help
raise awareness. More than 1,700 students
die each year because of alcohol.
Gordie was just one of them. “Save a
life. Make the call.” For more information,
visit www.gordie.org.
—Mackenzie Holland ’09
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 13

For more on the
fall season, visit
www.taftschool.org/sports.
S P O R T
FALL Wrap-up 2008
by Steve Palmer
Playing at Taft under the lights versus Suffield, Omar Bravo
’11 stretches for the ball as Will Ide ’09 and Mitch Wagner ’12
look on. Pet e r Fr e w ’75
Boys’ Cross Country 9–0
The first undefeated season since the early
’90s was keyed by early victories over
league rivals Choate (22–33) and Loomis
(27–30). In the big meets, Taft placed 3rd
at the 32-team Canterbury Invitational
to open the season, 2nd in the Founders
League Championship race, and 6th in
the New England championships to end
the season. Co-captain Mike Moreau ’09
led the team in every race, placing 3rd
overall in the N.E. meet and becoming
the third Taft runner under 15 minutes
on the 2.75-mile home course. Fellow
seniors Jimmy Kukral, Burr Tweedy and
Schuyler Metcalf played an important
role and made for a very deep team. The
convincing 19–44 Parents’ Day win
over Williston was Taft’s strongest race
ever on the present home course, established
in 1992.
14 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009
Regional All-American Liesl Morris ‘09 takes a shot in the
quarterfinal NE match against Nobles. Ro b Ma d d e n
Girls’ Cross Country 1–8
This young team broke through late in the
season with an important win over Kent
(26–31), on their rambling, mountainous,
challenging course. Taft then went
on to have its best race at Westminster, a
5th-place finish at the Founders League
meet. In that race, Emma Nealon ’11,
the team’s top runner, made All-League
with a 13th-place finish, followed by
Kristin Proe ’10 (24th), Zoe Hetzner
’10 (25th), and captain Diana Saverin
’09 (33rd) in the field of 55 runners.
The Rhinos return five of their top six
runners for next fall.
Volleyball 9–10
Having lost the New England title
by a mere three points a year ago,
the Volleyball team was determined
to get back there. However, the
Rhinos fell one game short of returning
to the tournament, despite solid
wins over Porter’s (3–0), Greenwich
Academy (3–0), and NMH (2–0).
Perhaps the highlight of the season
was an exciting 2–1 win over Exeter,
and the team would have several,
drawn-out five-game matches. All
season, Taft was led by the defensive
and offensive play of All-League
and All-New England players Grace
Dishongh ’09 and captain Geneva
Lloyd ’09. Dishongh led the team in
service points and kills while captainelect
Carly McCabe ’10 led the team
in blocks. Clare Greenan ’09 was also
a solid blocker and outside hitter, as
was Miller Bowron ’09, who suffered
a broken ankle in September, a real
blow for the team, but returned for
the final matches.

Digging Pink: The volleyball team raised
more than $2,000 for breast cancer
research through the Side Out Foundation,
dedicating their match against Miss
Porter’s in October as a Dig Pink Event.
To highlight the occasion, the Taft team
wore pink shirts, pink headbands, and
pink socks. Pe t e r Fr e w ’75
Football 1–7
The Taft football program got off to a
promising start under new head coach
Panos Voulgaris, who has strong ties to
Taft having worked with Jimmy Stone
’83 at Blair Academy. The ’08 squad was
a small team with good speed, and despite
being outweighed by every team
they faced, the Rhinos started the season
leading talented Avon 14–0 at halftime
of the first game. The main weakness
for this team proved to be depth, and
that showed up as the Rhinos dropped
this first game in the fourth quarter.
After two more losses, Taft looked as if
they would turn things around against
a strong Choate team, again leading
14–0 at the half but losing a tough one,
14–21 at the very end of the game. In
that game, Derrick Beasley ’09 scored
both touchdowns for Taft and went on
to play a big role in the exciting win over
Loomis, with three catches for 82 yards.
In that back-and-forth game under the
lights at Loomis, Taft was down 7–21
before storming back for a 24–21 win on
middler Mike Moran’s 23-yard field goal
late in the game. Senior Jed Rooney led
the team all year at quarterback, amassing
499 passing yards and adding three rushing
touchdowns. PG West Anderson’s
speed was a real threat for every opponent
all season, as he gained 766 yards on
the ground, 114 in the air and was also
the team’s leading tackler on defense.
Field Hockey 13–3
New England Quarterfinalists
This powerful team scored 61 goals on
the season, giving up only 13 en route
to a no. 3 ranking in New England. Key
wins came over many strong teams including
Loomis (3–1), Choate (3–0),
Deerfield (4–0) and Westminster (2–0),
and the Rhinos would have ten shutouts
by season’s end. Taft did suffer two, tough
losses: one away at Greenwich Academy
(2–3) and the second, a 2–3 game at
home in the first round of the New
England tournament to a speedy Nobles
team. While Taft controlled sections of
that exciting game, the all-important
goal did not bounce our way. Britt
Vasconcelos ’09 led the team with 17
goals, while co-captain Kelsey Lloyd ’09
led with 26 total points. Co-captain Liesl
Morris ’09 was a defender and offensive
threat all season. Vasconcelos, Lloyd, and
Alexis McNamee ’09 were nominated
as Academic All-Americans. Morris and
Lloyd were named to the 16-player Allregion
team for the Northeast. Then from
all the regional teams, Lloyd was picked
to be First-team All-American—only one
of 16 girls in the whole country and the
only player from Connecticut.
Girls’ Soccer 4–7–4
The Rhinos started the season well,
going 4–2–2 for the first eight games,
sparked by early wins over Suffield
(4–1), Berkshire (3–0), and an undefeated
Hopkins team (3–0). Despite
some tough losses late in the season,
perhaps the two best games were ties,
2–2 against Choate and the final game,
a 2–2 tie against Hotchkiss. In that
game, Taft was down 2–0 but played the
most determined soccer of the season
to even the match. Kerry Scalora ’10,
a Boston Globe All-Star, led the team
with 12 goals and 5 assists, and was a
dangerous combination with the speed
of Jenny Janeck ’11 and Laurel Pascal
’12 up front. Co-captain Holly Lagasse
’09 was an All-League and Western
New England All-star, and teamed up
with Katie Van Dorsten ’09 and Maddy
Martin ’09 for a formidable back line,
the strength of the team.
Boys’ Soccer 9–7–1
This was a well-balanced team that put
themselves in contention with the best
in New England with four straight wins
late in the season. An early 1–0 win over
undefeated Avon gave notice of Taft’s potential,
and goalie James Hottensan ’10
had perhaps his most important save of
the season, a diving clear of the ball off
the goal line in the final minutes. A hardfought
1–0 win over talented Salisbury
would up the Rhinos’ record to 8–3–1
at that point, and in a thrilling finale,
Taft dropped a heartbreaker (0–1) to
eventual New England Champion
Hotchkiss. The game would end on a
narrowly missed tying-goal, as senior
Will Ide’s shot just passed the post.
Throughout the season, co-captain Dan
Lima ’09 sparked the team from the
back, while Bobby Manfreda ’09 controlled
the midfield. Brooks Taylor ’10,
Omar Bravo ’11, and Jack Nuland ’09
provided much of the offensive power
for a team that scored 32 goals.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 15

With Unityof
Purpose
j Uppermids Alex Hutchinson,
Carly McCabe, and Nina
Martin, seniors Kira Parks and
Bisi Thompson, and middlers
Austen Dixon and Tom Sasani—
aka Yellow 3—stake out their
turf on the mall by 8 a.m.
More than 200 students and two dozen faculty
head to the nation’s capital to witness the inauguration of
America’s first African-American president.
By Greg Hawes ’85

w Going to the inauguration was amazing; I will remember it for the rest of my life. It was awesome to
witness not only Obama's oath, but also the amazing speech he gave afterward. Being able to experience
that with my friends, teachers and over a million people from around the country was truly unbelievable.
—Tierney Dodge ’10
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation,
we understand that greatness is never a given. It must
be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts
or settling for less.
—President Barack Obama in his inaugural address
On the morning of November 5, while I was still bleary eyed
from watching the returns come in, Greg Ricks called me into
his office and said simply, “We have to go.” The serendipity of
Martin Luther King Day and the inauguration of America’s
first African-American president presented such a powerful
opportunity to expand education beyond the classroom that
the decision seemed easy.
Headmaster Willy MacMullen gave us as a faculty a single
charge: “What lessons of citizenship, democracy and history
are latent in this day that we might seize as a school”
“Taft was founded by a man whose family firmly believed
in both education and public service,” says Rachael Ryan,
who teaches A.P. Government. “Our founder’s brother served
the nation honorably as the 27th president and then as chief
justice of the Supreme Court. Horace Taft’s vision for his
school was to provide an education for young men who could
go on to serve others in a variety of capacities. Because of
the school’s continued commitment to education and service,
our students graduate with a sense of purpose in the world,
and this Inauguration trip would only serve to heighten that
sense. Our students would be able to witness and be part of
history and realize the significance of public service and what
it means to all Americans. That said, even our international
students wanted to take part.”
It was important for students to learn that history is not
something that happens in a textbook, that history happens
all around them. And it was important that they learn that the
news is something that happens beyond their TV screens, that
there is more to civic life than blogs and YouTube.
It was the planning that looked hard. To take hundreds of
students from Watertown to DC by bus, get to the National Mall
somehow. Stay together in a sea of people somehow. Watch the
speech somehow. Get every student back to the buses and to
Watertown somehow. Was it possible to plan a trip this dependent
on last-minute variables
Led by Ryan, interested faculty began to hammer out
the details in spare moments between teaching, coaching
and dorm duty. Latin teacher Brendan Baran, who grew up
in DC, took on the many logistical details. History chair
Colin Farrar, late of the US Navy, put together a communication
plan with built-in redundancies and fail-safes.
Science teacher Jim Lehner put together the medical plan in
conjunction with his wife, Kathleen Plunkett. Bus captains
Mark Traina (history), Leon Hayward (math), Nikki Willis
(English) and Kevin Conroy (Spanish) sounded out ideas
and headed off problems.
Now, there are some who question the scale
of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot
tolerate too many big plans.
b Students took advantage
of their time on the
National Mall to check
out the Lincoln Memorial
and other sights.
. Students and faculty filled six coach
buses to be part of the historic day
and to witness the smooth transition
of power that is a beacon to democracies
around the world.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 17

From the Washington Monument, the teams of eight to ten
students with a faculty leader dispersed to find their own,
best vantage points. Some pressed ahead toward the Capitol,
distant and glowing in the dawn light. Some hunkered
down on the high ground before the Monument. One group
threw themselves into a pile for warmth. Some went west tow
Our trip to the inauguration will remain important to me forever, not just because we witnessed the first
black president take the oath, but more so because that moment in history was a defining one for my
generation. The youth vote was one of Obama's most loyal voting blocs, and it was inspiring to witness the
culmination of such a widespread, impassioned movement. After listening to his speech among so many
captivated spectators, I know that Obama understands that my generation has the capability to rise up
and meet the challenges of the future.
—Hailey Karcher ’10
As we pondered the unknown it was impossible not to hear the
voices of doubt, some external, some within. Were we nuts
Other schools thought so. Certainly, as we heard numbers like
four million attendees, we wondered if we would be traveling
overnight to stand in a mob on 17th Street far from history.
While we knew everyone would return exhausted, we
also know that exhaustion and short hours of sleep are a fairly
common staple of Taft life.
We knew it would be cold. We knew we would be far
from the Capitol podium. Wouldn’t it make more sense to
watch it in the warmth of our homes and classrooms What
in the name of Horace D. Taft did we think we were doing
Today I say to you that the challenges we
face are real. They are serious and they are many. They
will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But
know this, America—they will be met. On this day, we
gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of
purpose over conflict and discord.
w It It was was awesome.
Being part of of
that many people
joining together is is
one one of of the the coolest
feelings ever.
—Max Frew ’10 ’10
Departure time was set for 10 p.m. Monday night. With excited
energy we boarded six coaches, pulled out onto Route 6
and then remembered how hard it is to fall asleep on a bus.
Seven mostly sleepless hours later we pulled up outside
the White Flint Metro station in Maryland. Bundled against
the pre-dawn cold, we crammed into hot train cars. With each
stop, more bodies pressed into the cars. Under hats and scarves
and mittens and long johns and parkas, the air became close.
And yet, every time you made eye contact with a stranger,
they smiled. Small conversations struck up in the crowd.
“Where are you coming from” “Do you have tickets”
“Where are you going to watch from”
As we got farther downtown, and we tried to squeeze yet
another body onto the car, someone called out, “Yes, we can!”
And then out into Farragut Square, the cold stabbing at
any exposed skin. The dawn was just breaking as the crowd
flowed down toward the Mall. We moved onto the mall around
17th Street, and as we cleared the trees lining Constitution
Avenue we saw the Washington Monument—our first rally
point—standing with the morning sun rising behind it.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a
recognition, on the part of every American,
that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the
world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but
rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there
is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our
character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
18 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009
w Our group had many dance circles, and a few
strangers joined our festivities. The movement
was a good way to keep warm. It was amazing
to see our country come together and prove to
the rest of the world that we DO stand for
something important.
—Reid Shapiro ’09

w I myself feel called toward civic duty more so
than ever before. I am excited to be in a position
of service at this time in our nation's history,
to be in a position where I can teach values of
patriotism, passion, loyalty and diligence.
—Sam Routhier, faculty
ward the Lincoln Memorial to watch from that historic spot.
For the most part, we watched on the JumboTrons scattered
around the Mall. But more important than what was
happening on the screens above was what was happening on
the ground around us. The purpose of the trip was less to witness
the historical inauguration than to witness the crowd that
witnessed history. There was the undeniable, almost unbelieving
pride of the African-Americans who alternated between
weeping, shaking their heads in disbelief and embracing
whomever they could. There were the young people, of all
races and backgrounds, whose smiles seemed as bright as the
day itself: a generation of youth who were inspired to rise out
of themselves by a most unlikely leader.
There were the soldiers and police officers who stopped watching
the crowd and turned to the monitors to watch history.
And there was, in the cold and the wind, a clarity to the
light, a vividness that made everything seem both more real
and more dreamlike.
As a Good Morning America correspondent who interviewed
several Taft students noted, it felt like a music festival.
But that was the surface. There was the joy and common purpose
found in any large group, but there was also an awareness
in everyone we met that this was different. This was a pivotal
moment in history.
In the end it worked because of the students. They were
magnificent. They embraced their responsibilities to each other,
to the moment and to our expectations of them. They were
resilient in the face of no sleep and cold weather. They made us
proud of them as their teachers and, yes, their countrymen.
m Middlers Molly Lucas, Lillie Belle Viebranz and Grace Kalnins
stake out high ground at the Washington Monument.
America, in the face of our common dangers,
in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these
timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave
once more the icy currents, and endure what storms
may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that
when we were tested we refused to let this journey
end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and
with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon
us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and
delivered it safely to future generations.
Author Greg Hawes ’85 teaches history at Taft. All photos were taken
by faculty and students. For more photos, visit www.TaftSchool.org.
b Mission Accomplished: Dean of Faculty Chris Torino and
history-teaching couple Rachael Ryan (who spearheaded the trip)
and Greg Hawes ’85 successfullly account for all 220 students
back at the Metro station after the ceremony.
w The inauguration trip was the coolest and most
powerful thing that I have done at Taft. Despite
the all-night bus ride, the cold weather, and the
huge crowds, I didn't hear anyone complain once.
The enthusiasm from everyone involved made me
proud to be a Taft student.
Taft —Paul Bulletin Winter Kiernan 2009 ’09 19

From Classroom
Ph o t o s b y Bo b Fa l c e t t i
20 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

The Taft School • Children's Community School • Maru-a-Pula School •
to Community
By Virginia Small
Students make
connections as they
translate knowledge
into service

Service has always played a significant role at Taft.
Now students can broaden their commitment to
community service in the classroom as well.
On
a late autumn afternoon,
Nick Tyson ’09 and
Jessica Yu ’09 stand before a class of fourth and fifth graders
at Children’s Community School (CCS) in Waterbury. These
weekly sessions at CCS are hands-on segments of an elective
titled Service Learning, now in its second year. Located in
an old red-brick building, this private school enlists children
from the city’s poorest families in a rigorous curriculum for
pre-K through grade 5.
“Every single student is below or around the poverty level;
their lives are at best tough,” observes Ollie Mittag-Lenkheym
’08, a student in last year’s course. This school “gives these
children…something to be happy about and something to
look forward to. CCS also inspires and motivates their students
to want to succeed.”
Today, Tyson and Yu use their storytelling skills to engage
the younger students in a discussion about another group of
students who live and study at the Maru-a-Pula School in faraway
Botswana. To learn more about the African students, CCS
students come up with a plan to write them letters. They want
to ask the faraway young people about their lives and to share
stories from their own. The project’s focus this semester is to
strengthen ties among the three private schools. In the process,
both Taft and CCS students are learning about people, culture
and education in another part of the world. In turn, Maru-a-
Pula students will receive support from their American peers
and possibly gain more insights into American culture.
Back in a Taft classroom, seven students seated around
a large circular table investigate service from an academic,
but also practical, perspective. Annabel Smith, Taft’s chair
of Global Service and Scholarship, leads a discussion about
the logistics and implications of community activism. She
draws diagrams on a white board as the class analyzes the
potential “causal chains” involved in opening a hypothetical
food bank. “How will volunteers be enlisted Where
should the bank be located What are the local needs and
how will you meet those needs” She raises thorny issues,
such as how to avoid “stigmatizing” of clients, and how to
determine their eligibility.
As the exercise builds, students begin to see the complex
issues inherent in setting what might seem like a simple
goal for a volunteer effort. Then Smith introduces another
analytic tool called a “needs overlap analysis.” It’s designed
to assess the potential agendas of service providers and
their constituents as a way to find common ground. She
advises these budding volunteers to avoid making assumptions
and to consider that the greatest need in a situation
might be the least glamorous. For example, residents at a
home for seniors might just want someone to share a conversation
with them, while volunteers might prefer to lead
an activity or provide entertainment.
“It’s important to assess what is considered valuable,
and by whom,” explains Smith. The students are asked to
think about these issues in the context of their own volunteer
activities. Sam McGoldrick ’09, another member of
last year’s class, believes that the most impact he made as a
volunteer at a Waterbury soup kitchen was on a personal
level. “Although we assisted with physical tasks, like serving
22 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

meals and organizing the food storage, the biggest help was
probably in just making a personal connection with people
who came there for a meal. It seemed to really brighten their
day to have someone acknowledge them and talk with them.
A lot of these people seemed really lonely.”
Recruited in January 2007 by headmaster Willy
MacMullen ’78, Smith exudes a passion for all aspects of service.
She brought to her newly created position a background
as a history teacher in the United Kingdom and East Africa, as
well as experience in running community service programs in
South Africa and Philadelphia. She believes that it’s possible
to create “a very powerful model” when a rigorous academic
dimension and an experiential service component are fused.
“This experiential form of learning fosters independence, critical
thinking and compassion,” she says.
Student responses back this up. As Natalie Landis ’08
worked at the Waterbury soup kitchen last year as part of the
Service Learning class, she began to appreciate “a common
humanity among all people. I came to realize that helping
others could have an impact.”
Students also said they valued the insights they gained by
reading works by contemporary authors, such as Ivan Illich,
Jamaica Kincaid and Peter Singer, who explore social topics
including poverty, human rights, education and health.
Barry Clarke ’09 calls the class “an amazing, intriguing,
life-changing experience—one that reinforced service
in the community, heightened my view of existing global
and local issues, and created a deeper passion for community
service.”
"Service Learning is truly a class that is based on
the ideal that you get in return what you put in.
Each Thursday the class ventured into the heart of Waterbury
in order to put what we had learned the previous days into action."
-Ollie-Mittag-Lenkheym '08
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 23

"Do the intentions someone holds in their heart going into service matter
If one's heart is not in it, then their work might cause more harm
than good. These are the tough questions we debated daily in class....
Linking Taft, Maru-a-Pula and
Children's Community School
As Taft students volunteer weekly within the bustling community
school, they are asked to ponder larger questions. For
example, what challenges do these disadvantaged youngsters
confront in their homes and neighborhoods How do these
adverse conditions affect their ability to achieve academically
What motivators help them to overcome obstacles Both Taft
and CCS students also learn from trying to create bridges
with the Maru-a-Pula students. For example, 20 percent of
Maru-a-Pula students are orphans whose parents have died
from the AIDS epidemic. “Sometimes it’s difficult to talk to
CCS students about this topic,” Nick Tyson says. “So there’s a
learning curve in that process.”
This is where the team approach comes in, says Smith.
“Luckily we have the CCS social worker and teachers on hand
to advise us on the best way to approach these difficult issues
with different age groups.” One aspect of the current project is
to raise funds for Maru-a-Pula’s AIDS Bursary Fund through a
penny drive at CCS and a matching fund-raising effort at Taft.
Students at CCS can see that there are children who have even
less than they do, and for the first time for some, they can feel
the rewards of giving instead of always feeling needy.
The Taft community has nurtured a close relationship
with the Maru-a-Pula School for more than 25 years. The
school’s headmaster, Andrew Taylor, graduated Taft in 1972.
Each year, one Maru-a-
Pula graduate attends Taft
as a postgraduate. The Botswana secondary day and boarding
school enrolls 600 students and has earned international renown
for its progressive, holistic and “color-blind” approach
to education. Smith visited Maru-a-Pula last year and found
it “an amazing place.” She hopes to build upon those relationships
not only among Service Learning students in this class,
but also throughout the Taft community.
Smith sees many advantages in building ongoing relationships
between the Taft and CCS communities. “Being in this
environment is a great way for our students to connect with
what’s happening in the larger world. They’re experiencing something
rather than just reading about it.” And it helps CCS staff
and faculty to have “student teachers” come in on a weekly basis,
since the school relies heavily on support from volunteers.
Connecting the Dots of Service at Taft
The Service Learning course represents just one aspect of Taft’s
effort to foster its motto: Not to be served but to serve.
“We’re transitioning into a multifaceted definition of
service that is more all-embracing and sustainable, that’s beyond
just dropping in as volunteers for a day,” says Smith. She
envisions a Taft curriculum that eventually includes servicelearning
components within virtually all disciplines. The goal
would be “to enhance and emphasize the connections that
naturally exist between key themes (such as poverty, human
rights, education and health) and the academic program delivered
through each department.”
Smith wants to help “join the dots” to promote service
across the whole school community. “These dots include se-
24 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

...Through passages from newspapers and books, we looked deep into
how each person can benefit others, where help is needed."
-Kathy Demmon '09
nior projects and independent study projects, electives, clubs
and societies, athletics, trips and travel, visiting speakers, the
Papyrus, all Greg Ricks’ leadership work, summer reading,
alumni events, parents, the board, Community Service Day
organized by Roberto d’Erizans, all our community partners,
the Volunteer Council run by Baba Frew, Orphanage
Outreach trips to the Dominican Republic, Maru-a-Pula
School in Botswana, our friends and colleagues in South
Africa, and all of us and all our classes. We are all dots.”
Ultimately, her vision is to provide ever more chances for
students to experience life outside the Taft campus, learning
about and being useful within the community.
According to students in last year’s Service Learning class,
there’s much to be gained from performing community service
while studying its implications in a larger context. Sam
McGoldrick enthusiastically described the impact the Service
Learning class made on him. “I learned about how to do community
service effectively, and to understand what we can accomplish
when we really consider the best ways to get involved.” He was
also eager to express his appreciation for Smith’s approach. “She
has brought to Taft a new energy about community service and
has inspired a lot of enthusiasm for looking deeply at both local
and global issues. Her own devotion to service has inspired me
to want to involve myself in many ways. She’s done a great job of
broadening the sense of what we can do.”
Virginia Small is a freelance writer in Woodbury, Connecticut, and
author of Great Gardens of the Berkshires, published by Down
East Books.
"We attempted to record the stories of the students at
Children's Community School through interviews,
conveying their ethnic background, siblings, and the impact CCS
has had on their lives. Simply put, these kids were amazing."
-Barry Clarke '08
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 25

magazine
By Julie Reiff
In her book-laden office at
Essence Magazine,
amid a library like hush,
Harvard-educated editor
Lynya Floyd ’93 has
her finger on the pulse
when it comes to issues
of women’s health and
relationships. Today, it’s
more than just about the
“quiz.” For many women
the magazine can be a
vital source of medical
information with a healthy
dose of inspiration.
w w w .c r aw f o r d m o r g a n.c o m

How do you decide what topics
to address
I interview doctors and medical experts, read magazines, online medical
journals and advance copies of books. I talk with PR people about new
products. I have to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the
health field so I can pass that information along to our readers.
A new trend I just learned about is medical identity theft. Imagine
opening up your credit report to see, not that someone has charged a TV
to your Visa but that someone’s used your insurance to buy a prosthetic
that, of course, you never paid for and now your credit is ruined. The issue
is apparently becoming more common.
what do you find most rewarding
about what you do
Helping women improve their lives. I enjoy fine-tuning articles and generating
new ideas, figuring out what will grab the reader. I’m the kind of
person who brings home new information on this and that and shares it
with a friend. I think what we do is very service oriented. In October we
did a breast cancer story. Most people think of breast cancer as one disease,
but there are several kinds, and although African-American women are less
likely to develop breast cancer in general, they are more likely to get the
more aggressive forms and to die from it. One of them, known as triple
negative, is the kind Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts has,
and I interviewed her about her struggle with the disease.
Do you have a mission
What do you want to achieve
I focus on educating readers about the health issues that disproportionately
affect African-American women and empowering them to make wise
health decisions. My mission is to make sure we stay the magazine Black
women come to first for information they know will keep them fit. We
plan so far in advance that it’s sometimes difficult, but I aim for items to be
newsy, including the latest studies and new or little-known statistics.
do you think women value
relationships over their own health
Sometimes. We recently ran a first-person narrative about a young woman
who contracted HIV. She didn’t ask her partner to use protection because
she thought the fact that he didn’t press using it himself meant she was
special. She valued herself based on how he valued her. What she realized
later is that she risked her own health for him. Coming to terms with that
was a big part of coping with her illness.
We also run weight-loss success stories where time and again women talk
about focusing on their careers or their families first and putting their health
last. When they learn how to prioritize, they really turn their lives around.
I hope people have more conversations about these issues, that they
feel informed and empowered after reading our stories. I interviewed a
doctor a few months ago who said, “I know someone’s going to rip this
story out of the magazine and bring it into my office, so here’s what I want
to say.” That makes me proud.
how have women’s magazines
changed
They’re definitely more daring. Every month we strive to show women something
they haven’t seen before, tell them something they haven’t heard before
and that takes greater effort every year. Covers are more about celebrities
than models now, but we still do a lot of real-women stories. And the emphasis
on health has grown. I started out at Glamour, where I spent almost
three years, first as an editorial assistant and then as assistant editor. That’s
where I got interested in health and medical issues. I really enjoyed doing the
health pieces, but there were so few pages devoted to health back then.
how do you think the shift in
the economy will affect health and
relationships
Unfortunately, people losing their jobs usually means losing their health insurance.
Or, if you’re underinsured, putting off an expensive doctor’s visit.
We’ve done pieces on the importance of prevention and different insurance
options. Again, it’s about empowering readers with information: telling them
how to find cheaper prescriptions, the availability of pharmacy miniclinics
and local health clinics, how to negotiate with a doctor for a lower fee.
I was just talking to a woman the other day who said even though she has
health insurance, the copays are so high for physical therapy she was thinking
about not going anymore. But I encouraged her to explain the situation to
her physical therapist so that he could arrange for a wrap-up visit and perhaps
give her a list of exercises she could do on her own. Doctors understand the
financial bind we’re all in. But if you disappear on them, they can’t help you.
We really want to help women learn to advocate for themselves.
Interestingly enough, I predict that because the outside world—economy,
jobs—is so unstable, people will invest more in personal relationships.
So perhaps it will have a positive effect on couples. Although, I just did a
radio interview in Baltimore about inexpensive dating ideas, so money still
has an impact.
do you follow your own advice
Absolutely. I would never tell anybody to do something I wouldn’t do myself.
If I have a weakness, though, it’s good food, and New York is loaded
with so many great restaurants. So I definitely cheat a little there.
if you had to choose one thing
you really wanted readers to understand,
what would it be
Taking control of your own health. People used to expect their physicians
to be the guardian of their health. And while they are there to help you,
ultimately, you’re the one responsible for your own health. If you find a
lump, come down with an illness, get pregnant, you need to inform yourself
and make smart decisions. It’s not about just doing what the doctor
says. Today you need to ask questions, take notes, bring someone with you
to help you think of questions you might be too nervous to remember or
to ask. You have to keep yourself honest, too. You’d be surprised by the lies
people tell their doctors. At the end of the day, you’re only hurting yourself
by not giving this expert all the info he or she needs.
what are you most proud of
professionally
Well, I’ve been here at Essence more than three years, and what stands out,
what I’ve worked really hard on is our book released in January, called The
Black Woman’s Guide to Healthy Living (see page 7).
The other huge project, which became a finalist for the ASME
(American Society of Magazine Editors) award for best interactive feature,
was “30 Dates in 30 Days.” We followed five single women in the first-ever
interactive Web reality dating show.
Every month we present readers with stories in print and online that
I’m really proud of. And I look forward to more of them.
Watch Lynya’s interview on CNN’s “Black in America: Why are so many black women single” http://tinyurl.com/lynyaCNN
Or listen to her latest interview on NPR: http://tinyurl.com/lynyaNPR

28 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Bruce and
Helena Fifer
A teaching couple
nurtures arts at Taft
By Tracey O’Shaughnessy
Bruce Fifer stands like a swimmer at the edge
of a deep, cerulean blue pool. He spreads his arms
wide and tilts forward with an ache of aural anticipation.
And then, swoosh, he breaks the silence, pivoting off his
toes and reaching back and under with his arms in one,
hopeful, embracing stroke—suddenly, harmony.
Soaring, pitch-perfect, ecclesiastical harmony swells
through the oak-paneled Choral Room. The sound brings
a look somewhere between serenity and ecstasy to his face.
Here, just weeks before Christmas, with the afternoon light
casting long, sloping rectangular shadows on the merlot
carpet, Bruce can feel himself coming full circle.
Fifer, 63, is the revered director of Taft’s prestigious
Collegium Musicum program, which has insinuated
itself through the pores of Taft’s academic and social
fabric. It has also traveled to Italy, France, China,
Australia and Spain, to perform majestic music in suitably
august settings.
“What is most exciting is how Collegium has become
something so many diverse students want to take part
in,” said Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78. “To look at
that group is to see a snapshot of the school. You see
upper and lower schoolers, athletes, students of all races
and nationalities.... In the end, they are singers.”
Since arriving at Taft from New York, where he was
director of liturgical music and drama at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, 13 years ago he has made the Collegium prominent
and desirable. His wife, Helena White Fifer, is drama teacher at
Taft, a woman who can teasingly remind him that she fell for his
big, broad baritone voice immediately on hearing it at a music
festival in Cambridge, New York, nearly 25 years ago.
But who wouldn’t Even relaxing on the carrot-colored sofa
of his North Street living room, Bruce has the kind of stentorian
baritone that suggests rich mahogany sideboards and glinting
decanters of port. Short and sturdy, with a neatly trimmed ivory
beard and thick, boyishly cut white hair, his avuncular demeanor
belies his sonorous, “Masterpiece Theater” enunciation.
Helena, by contrast, is earthy and athletic-looking, a quickwitted,
inventive cut-up whom students call “passionate” and
“eccentric.” One of 11 children who grew up on Long Island,
Helena is the great-granddaughter of the celebrated architect
Stanford White and her cultural and artistic pedigree is
evident in the paintings and volumes that adorn the couple’s
home. Puckish, enthusiastic and intuitive, she “is the kind of
woman who can immediately sense if things are going OK and
adequately responds to how you’re feeling,” said Madeline Bloch
’08, a former student now pursuing performance studies/theater
at Northwestern University.
That’s because Helena has an uncanny rapport with teenagers,
says Debbie Phipps, longtime academic dean at Taft.
b Bruce and Helena on a Collegium Musicum tour of France. Peter Frew ’75
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 29

c Bruce conducts a
Collegium Musicum
reunion concert in
Walker Hall on Alumni
Day. miChael Kodas
“She gets things out of kids that no one else
gets out of high-school kids,” says Phipps,
now head of Upper School at Moses Brown
in Providence, R.I. “She would pick these tremendously
challenging plays which would be a
learning experience for the kids, and the plays
would become hits.”
Farce is a particularly juicy genre for Helena,
who introduced it to Taft with plays like Noises
Off! and Scapino.
Phipps believes Helena’s flair comes from
her “active listening” ability, gleaned from years
on the stage. “She’s the kind of person
who tells exactly the parallel story
that makes everything come clear
and really gets kids.”
MacMullen says he knew on meeting
Helena that she could add to what he says is
the school’s commitment to artistic expression.
“We knew she would be an incredible
presence in Bingham and the Black Box,” he
said. “In particular, her passion for farce and
comedy was palpable. She has attracted so
many students to drama, and she empowers
them: she has a way of making it safe to take
interpretive risks, to inhabit the character, to
stretch. This is no small achievement, and in a
school where we encourage students to take
risks, to try new things.”
The son of an Episcopal rector, Bruce
Fifer grew up around churches, helping spinster
sisters in the church periodical club,
playing Daniel Boone in the church play,
never questioning his parents’ affirming and
embracing love. Music played an integral
role in his childhood. He recalls with acuity
hearing the Bach Bethlehem Choir perform
Bach’s B minor Mass at the Academy of
Music in Philadelphia when he was a boy.
While the rest of the country gyrated to
Elvis Presley, Fifer was gobbling up epic
film scores, like that of Spartacus and Ben
Hur, exulting over Van Cliburn’s success
at the First International Tchaikovsky
Competition in Moscow in 1958.
Bruce’s 35-year-performing
career includes singing with
the New York Philharmonic
under Leonard Bernstein;
the Boston Symphony and
Buffalo Philharmonic under
Michael Tilson Thomas, and
even, yes, virtually every
recent Disney score.
30 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Bruce is on the original soundtrack
recordings of Beauty and the Beast,
Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre
Dame and Mulan. It can be unnerving
to hear himself over the sound system in
a mall, but Bruce’s career has always embraced
versatility—not just the choral and
orchestral music of which he is principally
fond, but enough popular music to be featured
as backup vocals for James Taylor, Art
Garfunkel and Pete Seeger.
But after 35 years in music,
Bruce had reached the pinnacle
of his profession and wanted,
in essence, to return to where it
began—in the embryonic voices
of students ready to meet new
audiences.
At Taft, he says, “I stepped into a wellestablished
choral program and I was impressed
by that and I was impressed by the
vibrancy of the arts in the Taft community.
They are not peripheral.”
Back in the Choral Room, Bruce spreads
his arms out across a field of students dressed in
rugby shirts and fleece, argyles and flannels. The
students clutch black-leather notebooks filled
with music like “O Magnum Mysterium,” and
stand poised for Bruce’s instruction, “Breathe,”
he reminds them, clapping his hands brightly.
“Follow the notes! Don’t make up pitches if you
don’t know them.”
“We have the most fun jobs in the school,”
Helena says later. “Sometimes I have to remind
myself, how young they are—you can’t necessarily
expect them to know what it feels like to lose
somebody or to love someone unrequitedly. At
the same time, they are very sharp. They know
what’s real and what isn’t real.”
“Our expectations are very
high,” Bruce continues. “Because
I think kids want that. We do not
play down to them…. Singing
must be work. But it also must be
fun. The students need to connect
to that soul, to their core.”
b Acting teacher
Helena White Fifer as
Theresa in Chang in a
Void Moon, the first
serialized play ever
produced in New York.
The ongoing drama
began in 1982, won a
Bessie Award in 1985.
Helena White, as she’s
known in the cast,
“goes way back” with
author and MacArthur
“Genius” Award
winner John Jesurun
and has performed in
60 episodes. One of
the original five cast
members, she has also
worked with Jesurun
in Shatterhand
Massacree, Sunspot,
Dog’s Eye View and
Black Maria.
Peter Cunningham
Taft Bulletin Winter 2009 31

From the Archives
Tree of Knowledge
A
rchitect Bertram Goodhue’s design of
HDT has been in the spotlight this year as the
building undergoes renovation as part of the
dining hall expansion. It is unclear exactly how
Horace Taft decided on Goodhue, but by 1910
he had just completed the Cadet Chapel at West
Point and had begun planning, as he wrote, “the
school for Horace Taft, Esq….which is designed
and will be accomplished in two or three years.”
The anecdote below is the only record of an
exchange we have between the schoolman and
the architect. It refers to the delightful ornamental
plaster relief above the fireplace in the Harley
Roberts Room. In his memoir, Memories and
Opinions, Taft wrote:
“It was a great pleasure to work with Bertram
Goodhue. He was a man of extraordinary talent,
but with an artistic temperament that required
some diplomacy. Friends of the school will remember
the ornamentation above the fireplace in
the old library [now the Harley Roberts Room].
Mr. Goodhue had the tree in the Garden of Eden
branching out into algebra, literature, and other
subjects, and the figures of Adam and Eve. I told
When Bertram Goodhue and Horace Taft
Disagreed About the Garden of Eden
him I never liked Adam and Eve anyhow, and
that I hoped he would get something else.
“When I came home I talked with the
masters, who sided with me, and said that the
tree in the Garden was the tree of knowledge of
good and evil and ought not to branch out into
these various subjects. I wrote to Goodhue that
it would not do. He replied that it was a keen
disappointment to him, and he could not take
it lightly. He added, ‘If you give that up, you
must give up the motto you so wanted—Timor
Domini initium sapientiae—Fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom.
“ ‘However, if that motto is given up, how
would this one do If no man can serve two masters,
how in hell can one poor architect serve a dozen’ ”
In compromise, Taft got his phrasing [carved
into a wooden mantle below], and Goodhue got
his Tree of Knowledge, but with Taft teachers
replacing Adam and Eve, each shown with the
symbols of their academic subjects. The headmaster
is depicted representing Philosophy.
—Alison Gilchrist, Taft School Archives
m The bas relief
over the fireplace in
the Harley Roberts
Room, which served
as the school library
from 1914 to 1930.
Inset: Horace Taft as
Philosophy
Thanks to Tom
Gronauer’s and
William Cunningham’s
1970 Independent
Study Project
“The Architectural
Decoration of the
Taft School,” of which
there is a copy in the
Archives.
32 Taft Bulletin Winter 2009

Alumni Weekend
May 7–9, 2009
Thursday, May 7
6:30 p.m. 50th Reunion Dinner Class of 1959
“The wish dearest to my heart
is that the Taft graduates all
over this Great Land may feel
that this is their School, that
they are an important part
of it, and that their Spirit
and Loyalty will carry it on
to greater contributions to the
Education of this land than it
has ever been given before.”
—Horace Taft
Friday, May 8
8:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Registration, Office of Alumni & Development
8:00 a.m. Alumni Golf Tournament
9:00–11:30 a.m. School Tours
Noon
Reunion Class Luncheons
Classes of ’34, ’39, ’44, ’49 ’& 54, Choral Room
Class of ’59, Watertown Golf Club
5:00 p.m. Service of Remembrance
Christ Church on the Green, Watertown
6:00 p.m. Old Guard Dinner
Headmaster’s Home
Evening
Reunion Class Celebrations
Classes of ’64, ’69, ’84, ’89 & ’94
Saturday, May 9
7:50–11:45 a.m. Classes open to visiting alumni
8:00 a.m.–Noon Registration, Main Circle
8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Works by Gail and Amy Wynne Derry ’84
Mark W. Potter ’48 Gallery
8:00 a.m.–Noon Archives open to school tours
9:00–11:30 a.m. School Tours
Departing from the Harley Roberts Room
9:30–10:30 a.m. Collegium Musicum Revisited, Walker Hall
9:30–10:30 a.m. Class Secretaries and Agents’
Gathering and Breakfast, Woolworth Faculty Room
10:30–11:30 a.m. Taft Today and Tomorrow, Choral Room
Student panel hosted by Headmaster Willy
MacMullen ’78
11:45 a.m. Assembly and Parade, Main Circle
12:30 p.m. Alumni Luncheon
Donald F. McCullough ’42 Field House
12:45 p.m. Children’s Program, Cruikshank Athletic Center
1:30 p.m. School Tours
Departing from McCullough Field House
2:00 p.m. Alumni Lacrosse Game
3:00 p.m. Student Athletic Games
(for more details visit www.TaftSchool.org/Sports)
5:30–8:00 p.m. Buffet Dinner
Headmaster’s Home,
Evening
Reunion Class Celebrations
Classes of ’74, ’79, ’99, ’04

Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
110 Woodbury Road
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
860.945.7777
www.TaftAlumni.com
Change Service Requested
Nonprofit Org
U.S. Postage
PAID
Burlington, VT
Permit No. 101
Winter Alumni Games 2009
b Alumni and faculty competitors at the
Jan. 10 game included the following:
Front from left: Mike Aroesty (faculty),
James Duval (faculty), Christian Jensen
’01, Courtney Wemyss ’78, Willy
MacMullen ’78, Matthew Barrow (son
of Jeff Barrow ’82), Ed Travers ’86,
Greg Seitz ’86, Eric Hidy ’93, Kelvey
Richards Wilson ’91.
Back from left: Gary Rogers ’83, Tim
Cooney ’90, Matt Donaldson ’88,
George Cahill ’95, Doug Freedman ’88,
Chris Watson ’91, Evan Nielsen ’99,
Jordan Davis ’91, Will Orben ’92
(faculty), Tucker Cavanaugh ’86, Eric
Turgeon ’97, Jeff Overman ’97, Sean
Coakley ’97, Leon Hayward (faculty)
and Steve Palmer (faculty).
c The basketball lineup included, from
left: Jason Honsel, Panos Voulgaris,
Casey D’Annolfo (all faculty), Tom Cherry
’01, Dave Halas ’05, Brian Baudinet ’04,
Scott Tarnowicz ’02, Victor Smith ’06,
Brandon Miles ’03, Jake Heine ’08, Jon
Willson ’82 (faculty), Eric Becker ’08,
Rob Madden ’03 (faculty) and David
Hinman ’87 (faculty).