January 2004
Dear Friends,
Happy new year from Chatham Hall! This is the first newsletter that I will be writing three times a year to special friends and supporters of the School—to keep you abreast of some of the details of life on campus, to give you a sense of the rhythm and the texture of the school year, and to include you in our work, our thinking, and our learning.
So, I’ll begin with a story….
A few weeks ago Monique Richardson, a junior, mentioned to her advisor, the math teacher Marci McGrath, that no one here seemed to care about the writers that she likes. “And what writers are they?” Marci asked. Monique said that she was currently reading Nikki Giovanni. Marci, provoked and curious, went online and discovered that the renowned poet, essayist, and social activist is a professor at Virginia Tech! She suggested that Monique contact the chair of the English Department there.
Off went Monique’s e-mail. There was an immediate reply with an invitation for a meeting, and one Thursday morning two weeks later, Monique, Marci, Chris Smith (Marci’s husband and our Director of Marketing and Communications), and I drove to Blacksburg, where, after introductions and some photography, we adults departed and Monique spent over an hour conversing with a great writer.
The compact and vivacious Giovanni was wearing two necklaces that morning—strings of small basketballs, actually, in honor of Tech’s women’s team—and she placed one around Monique’s neck as they parted. Monique was transformed by that hour. She simply has a new look about her, and I suspect that she sees the world differently.
Great people transform us. During an Assembly this fall I quoted a Wallace Stevens poem: “I placed a jar in Tennessee,/ And round it was, upon a hill….The wilderness rose up to it,/ And sprawled around no longer wild.” I talked about how new Rectors are jars: simply by being new and by being placed on the top of the hill, we change the landscape. However, Rectors are small jars when compared to the Nikki Giovannis of the world, the big jars—when we meet and talk with them, they rearrange the way we think. They civilize us, and we become a bit less wild.
This has become The Year of the Big Jars at Chatham Hall, and my dream is that every year from now on will be a year of big jars. Nikki Giovanni has accepted Monique’s invitation to visit campus on March 31—to read her poetry to us, to converse with us, and to provoke us. Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland and the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, will be in residence on February 11-12, meeting with groups of students and faculty, addressing the School, and speaking to the larger Chatham-Danville-Lynchburg community. Sherialynn Byrdsong, Founder of the Ricky Byrdsong Foundation, will be on campus February 22-23 to talk with groups of students and faculty and to the School community as a whole about her personal and spiritual journey since the hate-crime slaying of her husband, Ricky Byrdsong, in 1999. Last, and by no means least, Shirin Ebadi, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, will be with us on May 26-27.
The friends of Chatham Hall have made these exciting visits possible. The Partridge Fund, thanks to Trustee Emerita Polly Wheeler Guth ’44, is supporting Robinson, Byrdsong, and Giovanni. The idea for Sherialynn Byrdsong’s visit developed a few weeks ago during a phone conversation when Trustee Venita Fields ’71 asked me, “Have you thought about what you might do for Black History Month? I have an idea…” Venita contacted and made the arrangements with Byrdsong and will accompany her to Chatham from Chicago. Olga M. (Holly) Davidson ’70 (daughter of Polly Guth), whom I met at the Boston luncheon in November, has arranged for Ebadi and will support the visit in partnership with her mother. I still quiver every time I think of Holly stating matter-of-factly during a casual conversation before lunch, “I can bring you Shirin Ebadi….” Holly herself, a scholar on the Middle East, will visit campus a week before Ebadi to prepare us with a lecture and discussions, then accompany Ebadi to campus.
Right now on campus we are preparing energetically for Mary Robinson’s February visit: individual courses, grade-level English and history teachers in collaboration, and extracurricular study groups composed of faculty and students are researching aspects of her career. Some are organizing presentations for the School as a whole. We are broadening and deepening our knowledge and our voices to enter into conversation, and perhaps debate, with President Robinson. Big jars are rearranging our academic landscape for the new year.
Voice—the way in which Chatham Hall girls express themselves and present themselves as citizens of this community and the world—is my theme for this year. I have spoken about it throughout the fall in gatherings of alumnae, parents, and supporters of the School in 12 cities. Here is a list of a few of the numerous expressions of the Chatham Hall community to date this year:
- Our seniors have already been accepted at Cornell, Georgetown, Vassar, The University of Virginia, Purdue, and a range of other top colleges and universities.
- Faculty have been actively engaged in shaping the School’s Strategic Plan to continue the recent development of the curriculum to ensure a strong, broad, distinctive, and globally aware program for the future.
- Unrestricted giving for the annual fund is up 24% over this time last year.
- Freshman swimmer Ann O’Brien has twice set a School record in the 100-yard butterfly.
- Students have volunteered for a number of community service projects, including Habitat for Humanity and several holiday season events.
- English teacher Alice Cromer spoke inspirationally in Chapel on Lee-Yardley Day about former chemistry teacher Donna “Dee” Burch, who was honored as this year’s recipient of the Alice H. Overbey Award for distinguished service to Chatham Hall and the community. Dee was also honored by an anonymous alumna’s dedication of the chemistry preparatory room in Shaw to her. Dee’s response: “I’m thrilled! Whoever it is must have known how many hours I spent in the old chem prep room!”
- Senior field hockey player Maggie Logan was named to the all-conference team for her third straight year.
- Foreign Language Department Chair Mary Lee Black continues to lead residents of Chatham, several of them from the School, in community development plans and activities.
- Trustee Claudia Emerson ’75, former Academic Dean at Chatham Hall and currently Associate Professor of English at Mary Washington College, was in residence for three days directing poetry-writing workshops. The writer-in-residence program is sponsored by the Siragusa Foundation.
- Senior Danielle Thomas has undertaken an advanced research project on DNA analysis with chemistry teacher Maureen Miller. Seven other Discovery Challenge independent study projects are underway during this winter trimester.
- English teacher Dr. Mary Edmonds published her third series of lesson plans for the National Endowment for the Humanities on its Edsitement Web site.
- Senior Kathryn Mills rode her horse, Clearly Canadian, to first place at the Virginia Commonwealth Games in the Intermediate 2-phase competition.
- Over 500 alumnae, parents, and supporters of the School attended gatherings in Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Lexington, Birmingham, Houston, Chicago, and Chatham to meet Missy and me.
- Academic Dean Chris Hughes has published his ninth book for middle-school social studies students, People at the Center of the Civil War (Blackbirch Press)
- Twenty people have become members of this year’s Rector’s Circle, seven of them new members, toward this year’s goal of 25 members.
- More than 800 guests have been entertained at the Rectory since July 1.
- Freshman Brooke Coleman and junior Samantha Franklin competed in the final competition for the Randolph-Macon College Hunt Seat Medal, finishing as Reserve Champion and in third place.
- Alumna Sarah Wood Anderson ’96, and Trustee Emerita and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees Robin Tieken Hadley ’57 were among those who read at the Lessons and Carols Chapel Service in December. Robin also spent a weekend on campus, attending several gatherings in her honor, and was an honored guest at Senior Night in the Well.
My favorite moment so far this year? When two juniors tacked a joint photograph of themselves to the bulletin board outside my office with the caption, “FUTURE BIG JARS.”
I’ll write again in the spring.
Dr. Gary Fountain, Rector
-
October 13, 2008
Day Student Open House
-
November 9-10, 2008
Open House
-
December 1. 2008
Early Decision Applications Due
-
December 7-8
Open House
-
December 15
Notification for Early Decision Applicants
-
January 10
Reply Date - Contracts and deposits due for students admitted Early Decision
-
January 18-19
Open House
-
February 10
Applications and Financial Aid materials Due
-
February 15-16
Open House
-
March 10
Notification for Applicants
-
April 4-5
Revisit Weekend for admitted students and their families
-
April 10
Reply Date - Contracts due for admitted students