Fall Term Report Card - 2018

To the Great Class of 1969:

News of the Academy

As you know, it has been a busy Fall Term by any measure at the Academy. In late August the Board announced the appointment of John Austin, the current Headmaster of King's Academy, Jordan, as Deerfield's 56th Head of School, culminating a six month search. In October the Morsman's 99 years of cumulative service to the Academy was honored at the dedication of the Morsman Tennis Pavilion on the Lower Level, and in November the Athletics Complex, Deerfield's most ambitious building project ever, was dedicated.

Some of the topics which received extensive coverage in The Scroll included a three page spread on the Arts Program and debate over the Kavanaugh nomination. Other topics of interest included a presentation to the entire school by the '83 graduate whose 2012 email to the Head of School led to the sexual abuse investigation, an article on the being Black at Deerfield and another on the role of politics in the classroom. Juuling on campus and anti-bullying efforts also made the news. 

Varsity Football matched last year's 6-3 record but lost to Choate 44-8 for the tenth year in a row. By now it has become glaringly obvious that this is no longer the rivalry it once was because Choate has chosen to go all-in on its football program and now fields a team each year that probably could beat most NESCAC schools. This year's Choate team went undefeated again and won each game by an average score of 39-6. 

News of the Class

Stone, Kjorlien, Squires, Davies, Starkey

After a three year hiatus, some of the local members of the Class met for drinks and the obligatory mug shot before heading off to a nearby restaurant for dinner. In addition to those pictured on the left, Peter Bernstein joined us at the restaurant for what turned out to be two-and-a-half hours of nonstop conversation.

The first of these dinners was in 2006, and since then no fewer than fourteen Classmates have joined me at one dinner or another. What these dinners have had in common each time we have gotten together is the ease with which we have able to reconnect and resume conversations that began decades ago.

The Reunion Committee and its various subcommittees have been working overtime planning our 50th. Under the able direction of Lacey and his wingman Arnstein, members of the Committee have been re-engaging with Classmates, in some cases for the first time since graduation. Although registration will not open until mid-January, the responses to date have been overwhelmingly positive. Whether or not you have decided to attend, please submit your bio for Pocumtuck Revisited before the year-end deadline. The Reunion Yearbook will be mailed to everyone in the Spring. On a scheduling note, the final mini-reunion will be on March 1 in Fort Lauderdale where Rusty Young will be producing a concert by The Fab Faux, the foremost Beatles tribute band.

The members of the Program subcommittee (Beach, Clough, Ewing, Rawles and Olchowski) have been doing a crash history course re-familiarizing themselves with the Class by scouring through nearly 50 years' worth of class notes in the alumni magazine. They would welcome hearing from any Classmates who might like to make presentations or participate in discussion panels at the Reunion. Another way to participate in the Reunion will be by submitting a remembrance of one or more of the twenty Classmates who have passed away since 1969. A description of what we are looking for will be mailed out in early 2019.

Around the same time we also will be describing in greater detail the Class Gift which Lacey alluded to in his recent letter. The instal- 

lation of a bronze replica of the Deerfield Soldier funded by the Class will complete a multi-year collaboration to restore the 1867 Civil War Monument at the center of the Deerfield campus. The fabrication of a replica combines 3-D imaging technology with bronze casting techniques that date back more than 2000 years. The image on the left is a digital model created by scanning an identical soldier earlier this month in New Haven. A full-scale physical model will be created from the digital image and then used by a fabricator in New York to create the bronze replica which will be placed on the obelisk next Spring.

Best wishes to all.

DWS

Tee Johnson 1951- 2018

H. Taylor Johnson, known to all of us as Tee, died Monday evening in Knoxville, his adopted home following his return from Buenos Aires in 2010. Tee sent me the photo on the left in 2009 - looking quite svelte in his Deerfield fleece - following some weight loss surgery.

Tee was a larger than life character who never tired of adventure and diverse experiences. College proved a poor fit following Deerfield, and by the late '70s, Tee had carved out a career working in live entertainment. Over the course of 18 years, Tee worked on 4,000+/- live entertainment events featuring some of the top performers in Pop, Rock, Jazz, Broadway, Opera, TV and Film. He wore a variety of hats which included audio engineer, production and technical director and tour manager, and this experience in acoustics and related fields led him in a new direction as an entrepreneur. In 1997 Tee started an on-line outlet for upgraded Russian microphones which he then sold in 2003 and founded Taylor Hohendahl Engineering (T.H.E. AUDIO) to concentrate on a totally new design of microphones with proprietary electronics and manufacturing techniques. He moved to Buenos Aires in 2004 where he could more economically manage some costly health issues he was having at the time and set up a lab there.

Tee and his wife moved back to the United States in 2010 where he worked for several years in government contracting, specializing in matters involving the GSA, Department of Defense, U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers and related agencies. The last several years he was involved in the local music scene where he and his son worked at a spot that Tee described to me as "the hottest small music venue in Knoxville". Despite angioplasty and stents in 2017, Tee maintained a sense of humor, writing me after the procedure, "Somehow my reading material stack has gone from economics and science fiction to nutrition and history! Maybe the good doctors at the University of Tennessee changed a few brain cells during the procedure(s)..... who knows and who can tell?" Outside of work Tee continued to pursue a diverse range of interests which included cymatics, spatial localization and acoustics/wave propagation science, law studies and accounting forensics.

Tee would visit me on his occasional trips to New York, one of which coincided with a dinner I hosted in 2005 (dubbed the "G-7" dinner because there were seven of us from the Class). The next day Tee wrote the following which seems prescient on the eve of our 50th, "Once again, in reflections this morning, I am amazed at not only the diversity of our class, but at the many, many things that bind us together. No matter that I did not "hang out" a lot with many of the classmates of the last G-7 dinner; we had an immediate and deep bond that transcended any of our previous experience together and emanated from a respect for the intelligence, perseverance and experience of the last 36 years. In celebrating all of the things that are similar and that bring us together we have celebrated the best of ourselves and the best of what our "Deerfield experience" gave us. This is what our class shares and what we should always support."

Tee's widow wrote me last night that the local music venue where he worked part-time would be holding a Celebration of Life for him this Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of musicians in the area worked with him and loved him.

DWS

Spring Term Report Card - 2018

To the Great Class of 1969:

News of the Academy

The School held its 219th graduation this morning, and the newest alums are leaving behind the rest of the students to complete the academic year. The self-reported college matriculation results were lower than usual, however, the most popular destinations among 158 students who did disclose their plans were Brown (12), University of Virginia (9), Cornell (8), Columbia (6), Georgetown (6), Middlebury (6), Bowdoin (5), Duke (5), Princeton (5) and Trinity (5). In total, 26.5% of the students who reported are headed for the Ivies but, in a first, none to Dartmouth.

On the admissions front, Deerfield accepted 17% of its 1,822 applicants and had a 68% yield, meaning that 11.6% of the applicants actually will enroll. Of those who will be coming next September, 21% are either legacies or have siblings on campus, 13% are international, and 38% will be receiving financial aid.

In sports, Lacrosse (13-2) and Baseball (7-10) continued their respective patterns of recent years. Boys Crew was undefeated (5-0) in the regular season and finished first yesterday in the annual New England Interscholastic Rowing Association championship.

The search firm hired to find a new Head of School has been taking soundings at regional events. A number of scheduled changes have taken place on the Board which, at its meeting this month, promised to take up the question of the dress code with the goal of reaching a decision by January 2019. Other issues on the agenda, according to The Scroll, are the upcoming renovation of the Health and Wellness Center and opportunities for improving Deerfield's use of technology.

News of the Class

Ed Grosvenor accompanied his wife this month to southern Tuscany where she had taken courses a few years ago. Ed, not surprisingly, had his camera handy and posted on Facebook some shots of Florence and a picturesque fishing village on the Italian Riviera. Tim Truby visited Iceland earlier this month and posted some stunning nature photographs. You can see those photos and more of Tim's work by visiting his website. Christopher Beach is off to Namibia this month for his annual trip to some far off spot. Although Christopher retired in 2015 as President and Artistic Director of the La Jolla Music Society, he has found himself having to fill-in from time to time following the abrupt departure of his successor earlier this year.

No sooner was the ink dry on Edition 57 of Patent Law Fundamentals than John Mills sent off to the printer the manuscript for Edition 58. Over the course of his career as an attorney at the United States Patent & Trademark Office John examined nearly 400 patents, all of which he has catalogued for posterity. In the category of better late than never, Barry Ahearn spoke about “A Brief History of ‘Precision’” at the Ezra Pound International Conference in Philadelphia last June. Barry has been a full professor of English at Tulane University for twenty years and is an authority on Pound.

News of the Reunion

As you know by now, eleven members of the Reunion Committee visited campus earlier this month. If you had been there and were to have stood opposite the the Main School Building before anyone was stirring, you might have believed that nothing had changed since 1969. Old Main Street remains the prettiest street in America, and the school buildings that front the Street are all as you remember. It is only when the students begin crossing over from the dorms on the east side of the campus that you begin to realize that time has not, in fact, stood still. John Shanholt presciently noted this upon the graduation of one of his daughters in 2005 when he wrote, "Now I await my class reunions with more desire. Again I observe that Deerfield, while appearing to be the same school in the same place, is in so many ways a substantially different and better institution than the one I left in 1969. Now I have two fond and distinct memories - what it was then, and what it recently has been." This is a meme that I think only those who return for the Reunion will appreciate.

As I mentioned in my recent letter, we attended the now weekly school meeting in the auditorium of what we remember as the Memorial Building. You all will have the opportunity to see that the auditorium we knew, while in the same space, has been totally transformed. I invite you to experience what we witnessed with two videos. The first clip is of Kiana Rawji '18 Harvard '22 delivering her Senior Meditation  "In Search of Weight". I also mentioned that our visit was timed to coincide with the presentation of the Tom Ashley Award. See Lilly Hartley, this year's recipient, describe her personal and professional journey since her graduation in 1997. Rather than take my word, you can judge for yourselves the benefits of the return to co-education.

Arnstein, Kay, Suitor, Walbridge, Olchowski, Jacobs

The day after our campus visit, Neil Jacobs hosted the first of several regional reunions. Echoing Lacey's comments from the day before, our stringer Dave Suitor commented on how easily the conversation flowed after nearly a 50-year hiatus with Classmates we might not even have been close to when he wrote, "Our shared experiences about Deerfield life and teachers who inspired and tortured us in our tumultuous teenage years proved to be a powerful conversational bond." I encourage you to take advantage of one of the upcoming regional reunions to break the ice and get a taste of what Lacey and Suitor are referring to.

For those who may be wondering where all the years have gone, the Academy apparently agrees and has redefined what it means to be considered "Grand" under a policy adopted last year. As of a result of the "60 is the new 50" policy, we will remain known merely as the "Great" Class of 1969 until at least 2029. That is the unfortunate reality for all those in the Class who feel that they will have earned the right to be called "Grand" on the occasion of the 50th Reunion. As a consolation for deferring receipt of the honorific title, we will be invited to Reunions annually following our 60th rather than every five years, thereby guaranteeing full employment for our tireless Attendance Committee.

On a final note, the Reunion Committee has plans to infiltrate the 2018 reunion with three members of the Class. Their mission is to observe and collect information that will inform our planning and make our Reunion the standard by which other 50th reunions of our era are judged.

We will have more to communicate about the Reunion in the fall. Until then, best wishes to all.

DWS

Winter Term Report Card - 2018

To the Great Class of 1969:

News of the Academy

School will let out for Spring Break tomorrow to the relief of everyone including the parents of applicants whose wait to learn whether a Deerfield education is in their children's future will be over. If the Admissions Office has gotten it right, approximately two-thirds of those accepted actually will enroll. Applicants this year will have been able to see Deerfield's most ambitious building project ever, the $60 million athletic complex. The question for inquiring minds, therefore, is similar to the line in Field of Dreams, namely, "If you build it, will they come?"

The question is not an idle one for those alumni who are distraught about the nine year losing streak to Choate on the football field and the decline of the once proud hockey program which hasn't fielded a winning team in recent memory. For what it's worth, the squash and the swim teams were strong again this term, which suggests that first rate facilities, at least in those sports, can make a difference. A disquieting thought in view of the substantial investment in facilities is that the traditional spectator sports whose success seemed so integral to school spirit in the past are simply unimportant in the grand scheme of college admissions for most and that more students are opting for co-curricular alternatives to the sports program.

The news which eclipsed all else this term is that Margarita Curtis, Deerfield's first "Head of School", announced that she would be stepping down at the end of the 2018-2019 school year after a 13 year run. Her exit is timed such that both our 25th and our 50th reunions will coincide with a changing of the guard. Prior to the arrival of Mr. Boyden as Deerfield's first "Headmaster" in 1902, Deerfield changed the "Preceptor" every two years on average. Each of the last four heads (excluding interim Head Russ Miller) has lasted longer than the 50 prior to Mr. Boyden.

In other news, The Scroll reported that the dress code is under review (again). It was so much simpler before the return to co-education and the introduction of a rule book that, like the tax code, only seems to grow longer over time. The issue, as you might guess, involves the definition of  "Academic Dress" for the girls which, as the Head of School succinctly put it, "leaves itself more open to interpretation". No changes are going to be made without the involvement of the Board which views the dress code as a part of the Academy's distinctive identity.

News of the Class

As you know from my recent letter, the Reunion Committee has organized a series of coast to coast mini reunions which are scheduled to run from this May until March 2019. The first of these is a luncheon in Boston on May 3, a day after a campus visit by members of the Committee. The visit will include attending a school meeting, touring the new buildings, having lunch with the Head of School and meeting with the Academy's CFO.

If anyone still questions the demographic tsunami headed towards Florida, a well-attended visit by the Head of School to Palm Beach earlier this month should dispel those doubts. Anecdotal evidence from our class includes Robert Clough who left behind the cold weather in Maine and is wintering at his home in the Florida Keys for the first time this year. Jim Kay is also giving up the northeast for Florida, and AC Starkey arrives in Vero this weekend where Rusty Young now lives year round. I expect more of you to join us in Florida which now has as many electoral votes as New York (29). In case you're wondering, in 1968 New York had 43 electoral votes, and Florida had 14. Massachusetts, which was tied with Florida at the time, now has 12.

This month marks the publication of the 57th edition of Patent Law Fundamentals, John Mills' treatise summarizing current developments in that field of law. Staying current will set you back ~$1,500. Lyn Lee writes that he is in the midst of a two year sailing sabbatical and will be back in Seattle this July. Tee Johnson has been living in Knoxville, TN since 2009 where he remains involved in the music industry. In January, Tee did a show with Three Dog Celebration, a spin-off of Three Dog Night, whose best known song "Celebrate" was released in 1969.

Classes resume on March 26th. Enjoy the break!

DWS