Overview Six months of life at Thacher are chronicled in this Spring/Summer issue of In every issue The Thacher News. From commencement activities to summer events, from Big Gymkhana Weekend to new faculty appointments, it has been another 3 From the Head of School busy half-year at The Ranch. Building an Intentional Community by Michael K. Mulligan 5 Letters Profiles: A History of Helping FORMER FACULTY MEMBER 48 F. Perry Gates, CdeP ’59 Planting the Seeds of 36 David C. Twichell, CdeP ’36 Community Awareness, Integrity, Humanisitic Outdoorsman and Self-Reliance among the In this issue Youth of Maine TRUSTEE 50 Ted Rhodes, CdeP ’65 Campus Life 38 Paul L. Yelder, CdeP ’77 Local Hero/Community Activist campus life Building on the 6 Commencement 2000 Spirit of Community 53 David P. Livermore, CdeP ’73 A “Wrangler” Defends Our 12 Proper Imperfections FORMER PARENT Last Frontier by Kristin M. Berona ’00, School Chair 40 Yvon Chouinard 56 Michael G. Jones, CdeP ’73 13 The Stamp of the School Is Indelible Setting an Environmental High- If Anyone Deserves an Apple… by Robert K. Gardner, CdeP ’61 Water Mark 58 Ellen C. Loebl, CdeP ’83 16 Ride ’em High: Gymkhana Weekend ALUMNI Redefining Rich 18 Commitment by Richard Ridgeway 42 Kenneth O. Rhodes, CdeP ’30 60 Randal S. Bessolo, CdeP ’83 Fifty Years of Public Service Enriching His Life 20 Grandparents’ Days 2000 through Stewardship 44 Nicholas Cunningham, M.D., 22 TOAD Talk by Maria Morales Kent Dr.P.H, CdeP ’46 Heeding the Words of 23 Being Part of a Legacy “The Banquet Song” by David V. Babbott 24 Spotlight on Spring Sports 26 Faculty Greetings…and Farewells HER C S 28 Tidbits A C H H T 29 Introduction of New Trustees O O E The Thacher News L H 30 From Savannah to Summit: T Spring/Summer 2000 The Thacher Family Safari Volume XII, Number 2 1 9 32 Thacher’s Historical Society 88 32 Community Service throughout Editor The Thacher News magazine is published twice a Thacher’s History Jane D. McCarthy year by The Thacher School, and is sent free of charge to alumni, parents, and friends of the School. Design Alumni In preparing this report, every effort was made to Tim Ditch, Jane D. McCarthy, and J. Bert Mahoney. alumni ensure that it is accurate and complete. If there is an 63 Class Notes Contributors omission or an error in spelling, please accept our David V. Babbott, Elizabeth A. Bowman, Camilla Evans-Hensey, apologies and notify the Head of School’s Office at 70 Reunion Gregory T. Haggard, John S. Huyler ’51H, Jake Jacobsen, Jane The Thacher School, 5025 Thacher Road, Ojai, D. McCarthy, Kurt R. Meyer, Joy Sawyer-Mulligan, Michael California 93023, call (805) 646-4377, or e-mail K. Mulligan, Molly T. Perry, CdeP ’85, Cricket Twichell, Frederick [email protected]. 72 Remembering C. Michael Ehrhardt C. Twichell, Gallia K. Vickery, and William C. Vickery Third Class postage is paid at the Oxnard Post Office. 76 Obituaries Sports Section Joy Sawyer-Mulligan POSTMASTER: 79 Calendar Class Notes Please send form 3579 to the preceding address. Cricket Twichell Cover Photo NAIS Photography MEMBER Robert Brownell ’02 works with Topa Topa Elementary Jake Jacobsen, Jane D. McCarthy, Joy Sawyer-Mulligan, Wendi School students in Ojai as part of Thacher’s Community Parker-Dial, and Timothy O Teague Printed by Ventura Printing with soy-based inks. Service Program From the Head of School Head of School Building an Intentional Community New Year’s Banquet Speech by Michael K. Michael ne of the many happy rituals at Thacher choice—a combination, perhaps, of our own occurs each Monday morning when, at As- willingness, even eagerness, and that of par- Osembly, we are privileged to hear from ents and sometimes other family—but in any Headmembers of the faculty, each in her or his turn case, by our own decision. What precedes the as TOADly duties pass from hands to capable choice, though, is very often this: even before hands. One of last year’s many memorable we become members of this community, we TOAD Talks came in late May, and I know are drawn by certain qualities we witness in that you returning students and faculty will re- action when we are just visitors: a particular call it with the same appreciation I do: It was warmth and openness in individuals and in Mr. Manson’s offering on the nature of those groups, a code of behavior and a sense of per- “threshold” moments we have in our lives, es- sonal responsibility sometimes startlingly—but pecially in a ritualized life such as ours: those reassuringly—at odds with the mainstream cul- times that call for celebration; times that ture. We see these aspects of life here and want “allow us to recognize, accept, and adjust to a to join it. process that is as natural as the sun rising each morning and setting each evening[:]…the But being chosen—admitted or hired—is only yearly transformation of our present Thacher the beginning. The magic of this place that we School into yet one more past Thacher saw or felt initially does not, can not continue School.” He went on to say that, “Thacher, without other choices we make at each step like all schools, is the unique combination of along the way throughout the course each year. the individuals who occupy it at any given mo- A random litany of such choices: ment in time. It is something we create every Michael Mulligan on September only to then dismantle each June.” • leaning down to greet and thank the person It’s All Head Games receiving your dirty dishes on the other side of What I’d like to zero in that hole in the wall in the dining room and on with you for a mo- pushing your dishes back so that he doesn’t ment is the first part of have to reach for them; that last sentence: “It is something we create • taking a seat next to someone you don’t every September.” (The know very well who’s sitting alone; dismantling, thank goodness, is a long nine • stopping to pick up a small gum wrapper; months distant.) This a very basic notion: this • taking the time to document a history paper community is a cloth with absolute accuracy and precision; woven of individual strands: look closely at • calling a close tennis ball “in” even when it’s the warp and woof, to your own disadvantage; and you see the color, the relative strength, • admitting a wrong and accepting the conse- the texture of each quences with grace; strand; step back and see the whole. This • listening, without immediate judgment or community is beautiful thoughtless reaction, when a Judicial Council or ugly, durable or case is presented to you and your dormmates weak, in direct propor- by one of your peers; tion to the beauty and strength each person, • letting someone else—younger, older, your student, faculty, or staff own age—onto the town-run bus before you member, brings to it step on. consciously, intention- ally. In these moments—whether in matters of ci- vility or courtesy, of kindness or of actual Let me speak for a mo- honor—we contribute in very real ways to the ment about intentional beauty and strength of the fabric of our School community. On one and home. When we consider carefully—and level this means that reconsider often—the weight of our actions, each of us is here by small and large, frequently (in Wordsworth’s Spring/Summer 2000 page 3 Head of School Patty Abou-Samra ’02, Leigh Salem ’02, Michael Mulligan, Amanda Grumman ’02, Lizzy Brewer ’03 phrase) “nameless and unremembered”—in- thetic responses in which man first securely es- cluding those (and perhaps most especially tablished himself as irrevocably human.” Not those) no one ever even sees or hears—we be- inconsequentially, they lived to tell the tale. come the artists of our world, the architects of what is sometimes invisible but is as critical a “Good artists,” writes Wendell Berry in Life foundation for a strong and enduring home as is a Miracle, “are people who can stick things any bricks and mortar ever were. As the author together so that they stay stuck. They know Wallace Stegner said, “Culture is a pyramid to how to gather things into formal arrangements which each of us brings a stone.” So it is with that are intelligible, memorable, and lasting. Thacher’s culture, with our lives here together; Good forms confer health upon the things that how we choose the stones we bring to the they gather together. Farms, families, commu- structure ultimately and incontrovertibly de- nities are forms of art just as are poems, paint- termines its quality. ings and symphonies. None of these things would exist if we did not make them. We can Think for a moment of Shackleton1 and his make them either well or poorly; this choice men—numbed by the unceasing, bitter cold, is another thing that we make.” dizzy with hunger, internally demoralized, still marooned months after the point at which they So here and now, on the threshold of the only thought they’d be heroes back home in Eng- 112th Thacher School we will ever have, look- land—and consider some of the choices they ing forward but being actively mindful of the made, even in their misery: Macklin, for ex- present, let each of us include in our New ample, his hand mittenless and frostbitten, con- Year’s resolutions this: to be a worthy and tinuing to row rather than stopping to cover thoughtful artist, to make our community his hands because he knew that to stop was to well—with consciousness and deliberation in endanger everyone in the Docker.