R o l a n d P a r k C o u n t r y S c h o o l [ 1 ]

LeafR o l a n d P a R k C o u n t R y S C h o o l • S P R i n g 2 0 1 1

Laurel In 2001 Anne Healy charged our Centennial Class, at their Commence-ment, to determine, “What you will not renounce.” Her text came from Briefing for Finisterre, by Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926. The poem is included in her essay, the first, in our Centennial book, A Place in Our Hearts. In this essay Mrs. Jacob-sen noted, “I chose “Finisterre” from among my poems largely because of Anne Healy’s affection for it, and also because I felt its theme of final choices applied to everyone. Sooner or later we come to our own finisterres and make our choices among our priorities.” All of us who have known Anne Healy as Headmistress, teacher, colleague and friend know with unquestion-ing assurance that one thing she will not renounce—one thing that she affirms—is Ro l a n d Pa rk Country School and thus RPCS is so pleased to hold one special day annually in her honor.

Elizabeth Spires, poet and professor of English at Goucher College, joined us at the end of March for the third time at the Anne Healy Lec-ture. In 1996, she and her husband author Madison Smartt Bell gave the lecture and in 1998 she accompanied RPCS alumna and poet Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926, the Anne Healy lecturer that year, who shared her poetry and her career experiences with the com-munity. Elizabeth Spires was a good friend and occasional literary assistant for Josephine Jacobsen, 1926 during the last 20 years of Josephine’s life.

This year Elizabeth came to RPCS to help us celebrate the life and poetry of Josephine Jacob-sen, who died in 2003

at the age of 94, as well as to share some of the poetry she dedicated to her friend over the years. Elizabeth taught two AP English classes and held assemblies for our Middle School and Grade 5 as well as our 9th and 10th graders. Juniors and Seniors attended the evening lecture.

Elizabeth wove a tale of young Josephine, born prematurely at only two pounds. Josephine, who once called herself “a fierce particle,” had no

i

“Poetry escapes from its maker’s limits to rejoice us with hope.” Jacobsen

formal education until she entered RPCS in 1922 but she was very knowledgeab l e about literature. Josephine did not attend college, like many women in her day whose parents did not support further education, but among her many honors, Josephine Jacobsen served later in life as Con-sultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later renamed the National Poet Laureate) and received the Rob-ert Frost Medal for lifetime achieve-ment from the Poetry Society of America.

Not only did Elizabeth read Brief-ing for Finisterre at the lecture as a trib-ute to Miss Healy, but she surprised many audience members by reading travel pieces that Josephine had writ-ten so eloquently for the op/ed pages of The Baltimore Sun. According to Beth, Josephine had a “gift for hap-

piness” and was a “brilliant poet, but not a good speller!” Elizabeth shared a poem she dedicated to Josephine, Curling Willow, made even more memorable by the blooming curling

willow gracefully perched atop the table by her podium. She shared a poignant video of Jose-phine reading two poems which brought tears to the eyes of many audience members. Eliza-beth noted that Josephine called poetry “the written voice”—and how fortunate we are that Jose-phine’s printed voice will live for-ever in our minds and hearts.

EdIToR’S NoTE:Elizabeth Spires edited a volume of Jacobsen’s occasional prose, The Instant of Knowing¸ in 1997 and after Jacobsen’s death, Ms. Spires assembled the poems that Jacobsen had published in the last eight years of her life, including seven that had appeared in The New Yorker, into Contents of a Minute. She is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, The Wave-Maker, and six books

for children. A professor of English at Goucher College and Chair of Distinguished Achievement, Spires is also the acting director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing. Elizabeth Spires was

educated at Vassar College (B.A., 1974) and Johns Hopkins University (M.A., 1979). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and American Poetry Review, and in many anthologies including Contemporary American Poetry (7th edi-tion) and The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has taught in the Kaleidoscope pro-gram at RPCS.

About the Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926 Permanent Collection at Roland

Park Country SchoolIn 2004, friends and colleagues of esteemed poet Josephine Jacob-

sen wanted to establish a local repository for her writings, papers, publications and photographs for preservation and scholarly re-search. The Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926 Permanent Col-lection is housed in the RPCS Archives.

The Anne Healy Chair of English Literature and Language Lecture

A Celebration of the Poetry of Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926 as told through Elizabeth Spires

The Written Voice

About the Healy LectureThe Anne Healy endowment was created to honor Miss Healy who served as the Head of School for twenty-five years, from 1950–1975. A special day is set aside each year and a distinguished per-son in the field of letters is invited to meet and work with groups of students during the school day and to present an evening program for students, faculty and members of the larger school community.

“My initiation into another of the great literary processes came when I was ten. I saw a poem of mine published. Printed. In a magazine. For sale. Being bought by readers.” Jacobsen

Patti Lyall, Assistant Head of School for Student Services and 2010 recipient of the Anne Healy Chair, Elizabeth Spires and Jean Waller Brune, Head of School

Josephine Boylan Jacobsen, 1926

RPCS won two trophies at the Maryland Scholas-

tic Chess Championships in March. As a team, Winnie, 2018 and Annie Ho, 2021, Sophie, 2020 and

Laura Rockefeller , 2018 placed third in the Elementary School Championship sec-tion. Individually, Madeline Kim, 2015 placed ninth in the Middle School Championship section. The RPCS LS Chess

Club is coached by Chris Kim, P’2015 & 2017, John Rock-efeller P’2018 & 2020 and Arkadiy Frenkel.

In March Hailey Freund, 2019 won dancer of the Year in the young dancer division at the Ameri-can dance Awards. She will compete in the National Cham-pionships in Boston in July.

Seventh graders Ariana Rodriguez

and Caroline Mansinne went undefeated and won gold at the Columbia 13/14 Volleyball Invite at the Gary J. Arthur Community Cen-ter. Ariana was awarded MVP.

Congratulations to Middle School students Charlotte Kim, 2017 and Janae Edwards, 2016 who participated in the Baltimore Spell-ing Bee. Charlotte tied for 7th and Janae tied for 20th.

Rebecca, 2017 and Hannah Mathew, 2013 performed at Gilman’s 2011 Cultural Arts Festival, which featured

f o o d , a r t i -facts, demon-strations and entertainment from the nearly 30 different countries and cultures that comprise the diverse School community.

The seven members of Peggy Beau-vois’ advisory purchased a flock of chick-ens, a part of a sheep, and

a part of a water buffalo through the Heifer International Program. These gifts will be given to an impoverished family in order to improve their nutrition and generate income in sustain-able ways.

Lower School Chess Club

new

S&NoteS RPCS First K-12 School in the U.S. Named a Healthy School

Day of RemembranceHailey Freund and her coach

Rebecca and Hannah Matthew

Charlotte Kim and Janae Edwards

RPCS held its annual Holocaust Day of Remembrance in late March. It is a day of reflection for the entire RPCS community which includes the long standing tradition of quietly and continually reading the names of those chil-dren who died in the Holocaust. As she has done in the past, Jean Waller Brune addressed the 5th Grade, along with the Middle and Upper Schools who gathered in an assembly and told them that “one person can make a dif-ference and that no person can be an innocent bystander when it comes to opposing hate, oppression, stereotypes and inhumanity.”

One person who did make a difference in opposing hate and oppression was keynote speaker Sol Goldstein, American soldier and Holocaust liberator, who was born in 1923 in Baltimore. In 1942 Mr. Goldstein enlisted in the U.S. Army. During WWII, master sergeant Gold-stein served in Europe, fighting in the Big Red One (1st infantry), D-Day (Omaha Beach), and the Battle of the

Bulge. The defining moment in Mr. Goldstein’s military service was when he and his comrades at arms bravely liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, although when they first approached the structure, they had no idea what it actually was. In sobering, yet matter-of-fact detail Mr. Goldstein described his actions, his bravery and the impact these events had on his life.

It was Mr. Goldstein’s granddaughter who urged him to speak about his experiences in WWII saying, “Papi, you must tell your story.” It is for her and future gen-erations that he shares his almost surreal accounts of the Holocaust with schools and community groups. The RPCS Day of Remembrance is supported by an endowed gift from The Saxon Family, Annette and Michael Saxon, P’2009 and Frederica and William Saxon, Jr., GP’2009. RPCS is deeply grateful to the Saxon family for support-ing Sol Goldstein’s visit.

“Thank you for talking to us about the difficulties you encountered to save others. You are an amazing man and I am glad you shared your story with us. I do remember and always will.”

Emma Wernecke, 2013

Kaliq Simms, Director

of Diversity and Equity

Education, Sol Goldstein

and Annette Saxon,

P’2009

(continued on page 3)

[ 2 ] R o l a n d P a r k C o u n t r y S c h o o l

SSince February, RPCS has been participating in the Healthful Schools program, a new initiative that promotes the adoption of science-based standards for cleaning to protect health and the environment. Further, its goal is to “improve the health and productivity of students and employees by creating a healthier environment, inside and out.” In order to qualify for the program, RPCS underwent an audit of its clean-ing processes, products and equipment for compliance with the Green Seal™ GS-42 standard. Green Seal is an independent, non-profit organization that provides stan-dards and certifications for product and service providers in the cleaning industry for cleaning to protect health and the environment.

“RPCS is committed to the stewardship of the natural world and to leadership in environmental sustainability. The Healthful Schools program provides us with a com-plete framework for adopting best practices for protecting the health of our students and employees,” said Jean Waller Brune, Head of School. This initiative is one of many that RPCS has undertaken to protect the environment. In January, the RPCS Athletic Complex received an award for Excellence in Green Building from the Mary-land chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council and the School is waiting for final LEEd gold certification.

The Healthful Schools Program is part of the Healthful Buildings Partnership, a coalition of building owners, facility managers and service providers who are dedi-cated to promoting best practices for cleaning and health. Marion Stecklow, Execu-tive director of the Building Wellness Institute, helped develop the RPCS Green & Healthy Cleaning Policy and performed the audit for participation in the Health-ful Schools program. “RPCS is to be congratulated for taking a leadership role on a vital public health issue,” Ms. Stecklow said. Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and Cornell Medical School have documented that adoption of high-perfor-

mance green cleaning practices can reduce doctor’s visits and absenteeism in schools. With the participation in this program, RPCS proves that it is not only committed to protecting the environment, but the health and well-being of its students and employees as well.

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Arete/Excellence; delta representing dike/Justice and Tau representing Time/Honor. In 1916, the name was changed to Cum Laude (with honor/praise) and incorporated under the laws of the state of Maryland. Since dr. Harris and his associates believed that chapters should be established only in schools of superior academic quality, the group moved slowly in granting new chapters. In 1963, Roland Park Country School became the first girls’ school in Maryland to establish a chapter of the Cum Laude Society.

The Motto of the Society stresses excellence, justice and honor in the broadest sense and students who are elected have demonstrated good character, honor and integrity in all aspects of their school life. In addition to students’ aca-demic achievement other fac-tors for membership include: rigorous academic progress, intellectual curiosity, love of learning and the desire to seek academic challenge.

Head of School Jean Waller Brune awarded certificates to the students with the following Cum Laude Charge:

The distinguished record you have made at RPCS has won for you membership in the Cum Laude Society. This Society is a fellowship of scholars whose purpose is to rec-ognize excellence in academic work. As you pursue your education, it is our hope that you will accept the honor of membership in this Society as a responsibility to make some contribution to the ongoing search for greater understand-ing of humans and society.

ongratulations to the following juniors and seniors who were inducted into the Roland Park Country School chapter of the Cum Laude Society in April. delivering the Mar-gareta A. Faissler Lecture at the induction was Trustee Grace Applefeld Cleveland, 1998 an attorney at Arent Fox, LLP in

Washington, d.C. Grace imparted the following words of wisdom to the inductees, “you don’t need to have your life planned today. The plans you are making right now may not work out at all. And whatever you do instead may be even more wonderful than what you have planned.”

dr. Abram W. Harris, director of the Tome School in Port deposit, Maryland, founded the Cum Laude Society in 1906 to honor scholarship in secondary schools. It was originally founded as Alpha delta Tau: Alpha representing

W i n t e r / R e s u l t s 2 0 1 0SportsUpper School Season Record

V Basketball 12-12

JV Basketball 2-13

Indoor Soccer 2-5-3

V Squash 8-3

JV Squash 4-7

V Swimming 2-4-1

Middle School Season Record

A Basketball 8-0

B Basketball 2-4

6th Basketball 4-1

Squash 0-9

RPCS students pa r t i c ipa t ed in the disney Field Hockey Tourna-ment in orlando. E i gh th g r ade r s Abbey Roswell, Landon Warren; freshmen Natalie Shramko, Natalie Faust, Erin Wein-stock, Steffi Alt-man and Paige Rohde played for Capitol Pegasus Iroc U16 and made it to the medal round. Juniors Katherine Barley and Sarah Adams

played for Greene Turtle in the U19 division and placed fourth overall.

Jo Ann Song, 2012 has been offered a position in the Labo-ratory of Cardiovascular Science (LCS) at the National Institute of Health as a summer intern.

Sophomores Gabby Del Hierro, Lushna Mehra, Hera Koliatsos, Kelsey Myers and Elisa Yang will take part in A

Young Woman’s Introduction to Investment Man-agement, an investment management’s work-shop at T. Rowe Price in April. Tammy Passano Wiggs, 1997 will present to them on trading.

Congratulations to senior Zoe Jack, who completed the Lower Potomac River Marathon—26.2 miles!

Led by Sally Tucker, 2011, Upper School stu-dents collected 64 dresses for the Priceless Gowns Proj-ect which distributes prom dresses to girls who would otherwise be unable to attend their proms.

Jenné Matthew’s, 2011 photo won a Gold Key Award in the Region-at-Large Competi-tion for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her photo will be submitted to the National Competition.

Congratulations to Meghan Herwig, 2011 who has been named a Morehead-Cain Schol-arship recipient at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Fewer than four per-cent of the nominees—top students from across the United States and around the world—were selected for this unique opportunity. This is the second year in a row that RPCS has had a Morehead-Cain scholarship recipient. Meg VanDeusen, 2010 is a freshman at UNC.

Senior Ady Pié’s play End of the Line will be performed in a staged reading at CENTER-STAGE’s 2011 Young Playwrights Festival in May. Her play was selected out of nearly 300 entries.

Diane Beth Radov, 2010 has been selected for the Renée Crown University Honors Pro-gram at Syracuse University.

Nealy Harnesberger, 2009 was named to the dean’s List at dickinson College.

Savannah Bass, 2008 was selected for an internship in public relations at Tuscaloosa Academy.

Lower School Technology Coordinator Wendolyn Velez-Torres was named a Tech4Le-arning Innovative Educator. In addition, she was the keynote speaker at a parent focus group on cyber bullying at digital Harbor High School in February.

F o r m e r R P C S Employees Katherine Kenny and Ellie Ran-drup co-authored a new book, Courageous Women of Maryland, which profiles 18 of Maryland’s most influ-ential and courageous womens’ achievements and the choices they made to realize success.

news & notes (continued from page 2)

excellence ·Justice· Honor (Arete, Dike, time)

CRPCS First K-12 School in the U.S. Named a Healthy School

Zoe Jack

Winter Sports Highlights• The Middle School Squash team won the MS Squash B division

Championship! • The Middle School A Basketball Team was undefeated. • daisy Alaeze, 2012 was named the Baltimore Sun Athlete of the Week

and First Team All-Metro.• Varsity Squash won the Mid-Atlantic Tournament. • 2011 IAAM All-Stars: Audrey Todd, 2012 (indoor track and field);

Bella Salvatori, 2011, Meredith Von Paris, 2011 (swimming); daisy Alaeze, 2012 (basketball) and Gabby Weintraub, 2011 (indoor soccer).

Katherine Barley and Sarah Adams

The following Seniors were inducted:daniela EpplerAnnie GainesTracy KaczorowskiAnnie KaufmanJinny KimAngela LeascaGrace LeeKelly SmulovitzLindsay Wong

The following Juniors were inducted:Hannah FosterSasha FrankelMaya Hairstondevon HittMaddie KaufmanJoAnn SongAudrey Todd

These Seniors were inducted in their junior year:Alexandra dayMeghan HerwigZoe JackClaire LidstonNadine MirzaHannah Zimmerman

Jean Waller Brune, Trustee Grace Applefeld

Cleveland, 1998 and Honorary Trustee Dr.

Celeste Woodward Applefeld, 1964

Cum Laude Society Members

Middle School Squash Team

Courageous Women of Maryland

Non-ProfitU.S. Postage

PAIdBaltimore, Md

Permit No. 3621R o l a n d P a R k C o u n t R y S C h o o l • S P R i n g 2 0 1 1

LeafLaurel

The Laurel Leaf is published quarterly throughout the school year for the Roland Park Country School community.

Editor/Assistant Director of Communication: Kristin Raneri Nicolini, 1998

Head of School: Jean Waller Brune

Director of Marketing and Communication: Nancy Mugele

Design: Brushwood Graphics Design Group

Printer: Mount Royal Printing

RPCS news is welcomed and should be sent to nicolinik@rpcs.org. Maeve Corcoran, 2020

• Planned Giving •Making a planned gift to RPCS is as easy as contacting your retirement plan manager to ask that the School be made a

beneficiary of some or all of your retirement assets.

For information on making a planned gift to RPCS, please contact Ginny Wood Delauney,

Director of Gift Planning, at (410) 323-5500, ext. 3139 or delauneyg@rpcs.org.

May 22, 2011

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RPCS Regrets the Following ErrorHeather Oros, 2012 won the Yerman, Witman, Gaines & Conklin Realty Photography contest.

Join family and friends for the Roland Park Country School Red Hot Run 5K Race and Family Fun Walk on Sunday, May 22, 2011. Proceeds from the race will benefit the Endowment for Faculty Compensation and the Endowment for Student Financial Assistance. If you are interested in volunteering or have any questions, contact Katy Spencer in the Alumnae Office at 410-323-5500 x3122.

All-School Walk for Chesapeake Search and Rescue

Photo by Heather Oros, 2012