A Complementary View
by Vcevy Strekalovsky ’56 Our culture values the practical over the artistic. Arts education is often considered a luxury, outside the base curriculum, yet Harvard’s Howard Gardner shows in his “multiple intelligences” theory that visual and performing arts awaken and engage students, leading to self-esteem and follow-through—transferable effects. Our global competitors seem to understand this dynamic. Business leaders who are liberally educated understand that they are managing much more than the bottom line. Creativity, teamwork, flexibility and problem solving are required in...
Read MoreA Bowl of Eggs
by Rob Radtke ’82 One of the great privileges of my work is to travel around the world to visit the programs of Episcopal Relief & Development, the international development agency of the Episcopal Church. We are the stewards of sacrificial generosity from around the United States, and we take very seriously the responsibility we have to our friends and supporters to ensure that their gifts are used as they intend. My travel helps me carry out that responsibility. Recently, when I was in northern Ghana, I visited about six different villages to assess our programs and to...
Read MoreOne Little Glitch
By Luke White ’99 My mother, Pam White, retired from Milton in 2002. As a Health Center counselor, head of the peer-counseling program, and longtime leader of Octet, Pam used her vibrant spirit and warmth to touch many at Milton. Since that time, Pam enjoyed starting a small private practice as a clinical social worker, playing tennis, and becoming a grandmother three times over. As she would put it, “there’s just one little glitch”: in 2009, shortly after her 61st birthday, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Everyone whose life has been touched by this illness...
Read MoreResuscitating Compromise
by Katie Leeson ’93 “Washington is obsessive.” That was the opening line of a recent NPR story about the capital city’s laser-like focus on the 2010 health-care-reform law. I laughed as I drove up Pennsylvania Avenue, wondering if the reporter could have picked three better words to sum up the city where I’ve lived and worked for the past 12 years. As a health-care lobbyist, I can tell you with absolute certainty that D.C. is flush with obsessive, passionate people seeking to influence policy and shape history. In fact, advocates and politicians are often selected for their jobs...
Read More“From a place of joy and not fear”
by Annie Moyer ’97 I recently married my partner of five years, Renée Coronado Martinez, at a courthouse in Brooklyn, New York. Four months earlier we held a formal ceremony in Renée’s home state of Califor-nia. Our one witness at the courthouse was Emily Brooks, a friend since my freshman year at Milton. It was only fitting that Emily would stand there with us in the courthouse, and that so many of my Milton friends would celebrate with us at the wedding this past summer. I cherish the experience I had at Milton; however, my memories of the school are complex. For me, Milton...
Read MoreMy “Christmas Carol”
by Jesse Kornbluth ’64 Half a century ago, I left the suburbs of Philadelphia to become a boarding student at Milton. Philadelphia meant a snoozy day at a suburban junior high school, afternoons watching inner-city kids jitterbugging on “American Bandstand,” evenings doing homework with the radio on loud. Milton meant suits at dinner, toothpaste inspection, and homework in a communal study hall, where, if you asked the English teacher in charge—in a whisper—“ Can I go to the bathroom?” he might bellow, “I don’t know. Can you go to the bathroom?” As transitions go, it was...
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