Spring Term Report Card - 2016

To the Great Class of 1969:

News of the Academy

When Pat Gimbel retired as head of admissions after 23 years, it was widely accepted by interested observers that she would be a tough act to follow. This term it was announced that Pat's successor would be leaving after just three years and that the position would be filled by the retiring Athletic Director who has coached and taught at Deerfield for more than twenty years. In what appears a distinct shift from the triple threat model, Deerfield will have a full time Athletic Director for the first time next fall.

The question which inquiring minds wanted answered this spring was whether last year was an anomaly or the end of Deerfield's dominance in Boys Lacrosse. Happily, the team returned to its usual form and cruised to a 15-1 record with the only loss coming at the hands of Trinity-Pawling in OT. The team ranked second in New England and sixth nationally which matched the 2014 results. Varsity Boys Baseball, in contrast, finished 2-12.

Chip Ainsworth reported in The Greenfield Recorder that the Academy would be building a temporary ice skating rink at the south end of Main Street on land recently purchased for the relocation of the physical plant. The "Barn", where hockey games have been played, will be rebuilt with a field house above and will be ready in the fall of 2019. According to The Scroll, an anonymous donor has contributed a substantial portion of the estimated $50 million cost.

Although you now can watch the commencement exercises online, the destination of the school's newest alums seems to be on a "need to know" basis. For the third year in a row, there will be no accounting for where graduates will be matriculating in the fall.

Earlier this month it was reported that the Academy reached a settlement with a member of the Class of 1957 over charges involving an art teacher which the alumnus had brought in 2013.

News of the Class

After 36 years at AIG, Steve Bisbee retired this term and is now free to think about what he would like to do at the start each day when he tires of more skiing out West. Steve held a number of positions with AIG and, at various points, worked in San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and New York. His most recent responsibilities involved overseeing all distribution aspects of AIG's business with wholesale brokers.

Sandy Weissent recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the founding of the CEO Roundtable. The CEO Roundtable was created by Sandy at the request of the Dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as an alumni activity for "C-Suite" alumni of the school. Since 2010, the CEO Roundtable has expanded to serve "C-Suite" executive leaders from any school and increased its program offerings to include, in addition to monthly dinners, social networking events and business conferences in Chicago.  

Frank Henry will be completing his one-year stint as Interim Head of The Bement School with a trip to Korea and China on behalf of the school in June. After a summer in Maine without the usual August interruption for faculty meetings, Frank will head to Providence where his wife is finishing her PhD at Brown. Beyond that, plans seem open-ended except that Frank intends to remain involved in education.

In an oversight, I neglected to mention last fall that Robert Clough received the Distinguished Citizen Award, the highest such honor, at the Katahdin Area Council's annual Boy Scouts' dinner in October. Robert is the lead physician for Cardiothoracic Surgery of Maine, the only cardiothoracic practice in northern New England. Following graduation from the Tufts University School of Medicine in 1977, Robert started Bangor's first cardiac surgery program ten years later.

Undergraduates will clear out after exams this week. For us, this weekend was the signal to break out the BBQ.

Best wishes for the summer.

DWS