Winter Term Report Card - 2019

To the Great Class of 1969:

The Academy let out for Spring Break on Saturday following some strange fluctuations in the normal weather for the time of year.

News of the Academy

Within months of the announcement that the Head of King's Academy would be decamping to Deerfield, King's Academy snared a Deerfield teacher while on sabbatical to be its new Head of School. In case it slipped your mind, Margarita Curtis's predecessor (and the Academy's ONLY alumnus since 1797 to serve as Headmaster), was also the first Head of School at King's Academy.

A cursory review of The Scroll revealed a surfeit of articles on the genders but no information for those who devoted the time to answer the endless questionnaire as to how, if at all, the dress code will change. In a throwback to the 60's, the former head of the Weather Underground (NOT to be confused with the weather service of the same name) was invited to speak on campus. A review of the Pocumtuck from the '40s through the '70s by The Scroll revealed compromising photos of students posing as racial caricatures.

A member of the Class of 1993 generously donated the hockey rink which replaced the Barn, and the results of the upgrade were gratifying. For the first time in recent memory, the Boys Hockey team compiled a winning record, finishing the season 15-9-3. In other sports, Boys Swimming had its best season since 2014-2015, going 9-2 with its only losses to Exeter and Andover. Girls Squash, a perennially strong program since the new squash courts were built in 2007, ended a 12-3 season with a second place finish in the New England Championships. Things look promising for Boys Squash next season on account of the JV's 16-0 record. Could any of this success have something to do with the fact that the position of "Captain Deerfield" is being shared with a girl for the first time this year?

News of the Class

Clough, Carter, Squires, Young, Louis, Berkowitz

A week ago Rusty Young provided the tickets and Richard Berkowitz supplied the spread for the motley group to the left at the fourth and final mini-reunion before the main event, June 6-9. The six of us were in Fort Lauderdale for a concert by the Fab Faux, the foremost Beatles tribute band for the past twenty years.

Our quinquennial Attendance Chair Lacey has put the finishing touches on a communique encouraging you to register which should go out this week. There's no good reason to procrastinate as the price only goes up as the date approaches. As of Friday, 33 Classmates had registered. The list of attendees is updated each Friday afternoon, and you can find it by going to Who's Coming.

In other news, Margarita Curtis has been making her final tour as Head of School before her formal retirement on June 30th. Doug Arnstein and Ben Walbridge were among the attendees at a Deerfield event in San Francisco last week which was billed as a celebration of her legacy, and I attended a similar gathering in Palm Beach the week before. John Mills recently attended a "DACONNECT" networking discussion in Washington, DC where he volunteered to provide career counseling to recent graduates. John is one of NINE Classmates who will be making presentations at the Reunion. A detailed invitation describing the program for the Reunion is scheduled to be sent at the end of the March.

Please mark you calendars for June 6-9 and register for the Reunion now. Lacey's feeling the pressure to deliver a record turnout which seems within reach.

Best wishes to all.

DWS

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