Jack Manning ’16, a Boston College sophomore, became the first recipient of the BC Strong scholarship in a ceremony today at Boston College. The new scholarship was presented by Jessica Kensky and her husband, 2005 BC graduate Patrick Downes, who were newlyweds when both lost legs in the Marathon bombings in 2013.

The scholarship was the brainchild of group of close friends and BC classmates of Downes. The couple spent their long healing process reaching out to others impacted by traumatic injuries, especially people who have undergone amputations. Ms. Kensky and Mr. Downes felt Jack was a perfect fit for the scholarship.

As a young child, Jack endured a battle with cancer that led to his losing half his leg to the disease. Yet throughout his years at Roxbury Latin, he continued to play sports, competing in both baseball and football. Jack counsels young patients and their parents at Boston Children’s Hospital and is currently preparing for his third ride in the Pan-Mass Challenge to support the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Jack tells children facing the kind of amputation that he experienced as a child, “You can still be active…and not let it limit you,” he said.

Mr. Downes also sees the scholarship as part of an effort to make BC more inclusive and more navigable for people with physical limitations, and to build a community of support and mentorship.Read the Globe article here.

After classes on Monday, 16 October, Class IV master Jim Ryan took a group of his freshmen over to RL neighbor Deutsches Altenheim to spend time with the elderly residents there. The senior living community is accustomed to regular visits from Class IV—indeed, for years RL freshmen have been calling on the Altenheim residents, performing music, sharing their artwork, discussing poetry, delivering speeches, comparing family traditions. Each RL class conducts its own, yearlong service project, and getting to know our Altenheim neighbors is Class IV’s.

But Monday’s visit stood out. Accompanying the freshmen were two upper classmen: junior John Frates, who has just published a book of wordsearch puzzles, and senior Ben LaFond, who is the latest in a growing cadre of RL boys who have been bitten by the crossword bug.

Altenheim residents were gathered around small tables and in soft chairs in the Vista Room while John and Ben each gave a short presentation on the process of puzzle making. In the lively Q&A that followed, the two boys answered questions about how they got interested in making puzzles in the first place. Ben owes his avocation to Math Department Chair John Lieb, who—though a relative newcomer to crossword creation—has had eleven of his puzzles published in the New York Times. John Frates was inspired to create his book of wordsearches when his grandmother began having more difficulty with her memory and struggled with the standard word-search puzzle books she used to love.

The rest of the time was spent tackling the sheets of wordsearches and crossword puzzles John and Ben brought with them, the boys working side-by-side with their hosts. Laughter and conversation buzzed around huddled heads and sharpened pencils—a witness to the sheer fun of puzzle-solving that engages young and old without discrimination.

Homecoming and Family Day on Saturday, 14 October, brought crowds—despite the threat of damp weather. Alumni, students, and their families (as well as visiting teams and guests) enjoyed a barbecue lunch under the colonade of the Gordon Field House, while cheering varsity teams in contests throughout the afternoon. Both RL soccer (vs Tabor) and cross country (vs Belmont Hill) won; football (vs Nobles) was a close loss. At halftime, sixies and fifthies tested their mettle in the annual tug-of-war on Schoolhouse Field, with fifthies victorious.Prior to the barbecue and games, Admission Director Billy Quirk ’04 gave a presentation in the Evans Choral Room for alumni considering an independent school for their sons or daughters.See photos of the day here.

Every year, as he’s driving home from the Annual Fund kick-off, AndyMcElaney ’96 calls his father on his cell and thanks him, again, for sending him to Roxbury Latin.

The gala that inspires Mr. McElaney every October has followed the same format for years: cocktail reception followed by dinner and remarks, featuring a student and a member of the faculty. Yet every year the celebratory spirit and the candid perspectives of the student and the teacher leave attendees feeling “blown away”—to use the words of one of the guests. “I remember all over again why I love this place and believe in its mission.”

In his after dinner remarks, Joe Nero, a senior, described all the ways RL has changed him. One theme stood out—stepping out of one’s comfort zone and joining up. Taking up cross country as a neophyte sixie; signing up late for Junior Chorus when he noticed how his classmates enjoyed it; and competing with the debate team as an upperclassman—Joe espoused a great RL truth when he said, “We’re at our best when we are part of a team. And so many experiences at RL have ‘team’ at their core.”

The faculty speaker, Kate Stearns, is RL’s writer in residence. She is also an RL parent, having piloted Nate ’04 and Sam ’07 through years of carpools, late rehearsals, and athletic contests. The carpools, she said, were “an excellent source of information for the parent who understands that his or her job is to drive silently and invisibly,” and she provided an example of one of the four-way discussions, which were often “filled with ethical dilemmas and intricate plots.”

She offered this insight into teaching at RL: “You teach a discipline you love and are passionate about, but of course you are not only teaching English or Math or Latin, you are teaching Joe and Ayinde and Robert. Everything that happens has to do with our close acquaintanceship, which makes teaching here both a privilege and a lot of fun.”

A school, more than most institutions, can be constant yet always fresh because a stream of new students flows through it. Roxbury Latin knows that by knowing itself, loving its boys, and daily putting its mission into practice, it will merit future waves of gratitude from the present generation decades from now.See photos from the event here.

On 10 October, the School welcomed Ambassador Mark Storella, Class of 1977, back to campus, to deliver the fourteenth annual Jarvis International Fund lecture.

A member of the Senior Foreign Service, with a long-standing commitment to human rights and human affairs, Amb. Storella joined the bureau in 2016, and today serves as deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Over his distinguished career in foreign service, he has been involved in counterterrorism efforts at Embassy Brussels; focused on innovative health and governance programs in Zambia; and served as senior coordinator for Iraqi refugees in Baghdad from 2009 to 2010.

At R.L. in the 1970s, Mark was raised with the axiom, Think globally, act locally. He said, “In my career, I have turned that on its head: Think locally, act globally.” He implored his student listeners to “draw on the lessons of this School, and of our society—both our virtues and our faults—to make both our country and the world better.”

Amb. Storella’s work is all about acting globally—dealing with 21st-century challenges including epidemics (avian influenza, Zika virus) and the ever-growing refugee crisis. “Global health depends on fast and effective response,” he said. “We have to stop global epidemics far from our shores. Logan International Airport cannot be our first line of defense.”

The refugee crisis, an epidemic of its own, is having a global impact, and frontline countries are under tremendous stress. Amb. Storella said that while the main goal is repatriation of refugees, sometimes that isn’t an option. He said that in all these crises, the rest of the world really does look to the leadership of the U.S.

Forty years ago, Amb. Storella was the valedictorian speaker for his graduating class. In his address, he warned against the cynic: “Because the cynic distrusts human motives, he may refuse to participate in socially beneficial projects. Because he withdraws from personal contact, he may be unable to reach beyond himself to others.” In the years since delivering that address, he has made manifest his rejection of the cynic, and his commitment to reaching beyond himself, for the benefit of others.

Amb. Storella is one of several R.L. alumni to serve as ambassadors over the last century, and joins Robert Hannan ’80 and Peter Martin ’85, who are currently members of the foreign service.

The F. Washington Jarvis International Fund was established by Jack Hennessy ’54 and his wife Margarita to support The Roxbury Latin School’s mission to expose its boys and masters to the political, economic, and cultural complexities of the international enterprise. Since the Fund’s inception, the School has sponsored speakers and cultural programs and expanded the support it offers its students and faculty for foreign travel, with the goal to advance their understanding of the world.

Past Jarvis International Fund lecturers:

Paul A. Volcker, past Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2004 (inaugural speaker)

Ambassador Richard W. Murphy, 2005

Ambassador Richard N. Haass, 2006

Linda Fasulo, Special Correspondent to the U.N. for NBC News and MSNBC, 2007

Peter D. Bell, Senior Research Fellow, The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, 2008

General Anthony Zinni, 2009

Sir Eric Anderson, former Provost of Eton College, 2010

Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University; retired U.S. Army colonel, 2011

R. Nicholas Burns, Professor of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, 2012

Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense; former Director of the CIA, 2013

Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico, 2014

Dr. Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, 2015

Lisa O. Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, 2016

John Frates of Class II wants to bring some happiness to his grandmother and people affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and he has designed and published a book of word-search puzzles just for them.

When John’s grandmother began having more difficulty with her memory and struggled with the standard word-search puzzle books she used to love, John resolved to create puzzles just for her, so she could still feel challenged, but also rewarded when she was successful.

John went beyond using a larger font. He also chose words that were well-known and mostly shorter, and since the diagonal and backward answers often frustrate his grandmother, he decided to limit them to mostly horizontal with a few vertical. For the filler letters he avoids close-match or tricky letter pairings. “For each puzzle, I grouped the words into obvious categories like presidents, cars, spring, and pets,” he explains. “I wanted my grandmother to feel the fun again of finding the words.”

In his introduction to the book, headmaster Kerry Brennan (who is also John’s faculty advisor) wrote, “While it may seem this book is about word searches, it really is about a young man’s love for his grandmother and his clever, persistent commitment to ensuring that she have as much joy in her life as possible.”

All the profits from the sales of John’s book (available at amazon.com) go directly to the Alzheimer’s Association, which is dedicated to Alzheimer’s research and supporting people living with dementia as well as their caregivers.

Felix Wang ’17, currently a freshman at Stanford, was named a 2017 Davidson Fellow in mathematics for his project Functional Equations in Complex Analysis and Number Theory. The Fellowship comes with a $25,000 scholarship.

At Roxbury Latin, Felix’s fascination with math led him to apply to the MIT-PRIMES program, where he began his research and where he was introduced to Professor Michael Zieve and Thao Do, who became his project mentors.

The results of Felix’s research extend and improve several results of the mathematician Joseph Ritt (1893-1951). Since Ritt’s results have generated important contributions to fields such as complex analysis, number theory, and dynamical systems—among others—Felix believes that his results will also provide significant contributions to several mathematical fields.

Felix was a finalist last spring in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. At Stanford he hopes to major in either math or computer science. Outside of academics, he enjoys playing sports (soccer, frisbee, and spikeball) and playing the piano. 

Under the watchful and patient guidance of Habitat for Humanity site supervisors, seven boys in Classes II and I, accompanied by RL masters Mike Pojman and Myron McLaren, gave a late-September Saturday to help on a Habitat build in Dorchester. Climbing ladders and scaffolding, seniors Mahamud Hashi, Elson Ortiz, Matt Sheehan and juniors John Frates, Matt Fumarola, Lo Monteiro-Clewall, and Gil Rosenthal worked toward the completion of a duplex on a previously undeveloped lot. When completed later this year, the modern residence will provide affordable housing for two local families.See photos here.

At Roxbury Latin, part of our work is to ask the bigger questions, and to consider who we are, spiritually. On the Jewish High Holy Days, as on the highest holidays of the Christian and Muslim traditions, we regularly hear from faith leaders from beyond our walls. In Hall on Thursday, we heard from three of our own.

In this most holy week of the Jewish calendar, seniors Andrew Steinberg, Jake Wexelblatt, and Zach Levin offered fellow students, faculty and staff an education on the long history of the High Holy Days; the beloved traditions of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in their own homes and around the world; and even a tutorial on the shofar, an ancient musical instrument made from a ram’s horn.

Watch the video below for their full Hall presentation.

As a nine-year-old, Arn Chorn-Pond was one of hundreds of Cambodian children sent to prison camps when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. Under the life-saving tutelage of Youen Mek—a master artist—Arn survived by playing the flute, performing propaganda music to entertain soldiers and drown the sounds of executions. Forced into battle during the Vietnamese invasion, Arn escaped into the jungle and made his way over the border into Thailand. There, in dire health, he met The Reverend Peter Pond who formally adopted him and brought him to the United States.

Mr. Chorn-Pond spoke with boys and faculty in Hall this week, sharing his story, his music, and the resonant life lessons derived from both.

He spoke about his great struggle transitioning to life in the United States, where he faced the inability to communicate in English, discrimination for his brown skin, and derision for being an outsider. At the urging of his adoptive father, Arn learned to process his emotions and, ultimately, began to tell his story. That decision became a turning point for Arn, who eventually enrolled at Brown University, which he left after two years to co-found Children of War—an organization dedicated to helping children suffering traumas of all kinds. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Providence College and, since, has committed himself fully to humanitarian service and the arts.

An internationally-renowned human rights activist, he received the 1991 Amnesty International Human Rights Award, and the 1993 Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize, among other honors. His story is the subject of the book Never Fall Down—nominated for the National Book Award. An accomplished flautist, Mr. Chorn-Pond has performed with Grammy Award-winner Peter Gabriel and Grammy-nominated Ron Korb. He founded the Cambodian Living Arts, whose mission is to be a catalyst in a vibrant arts sector, in a country whose rich, artistic tradition was all but destroyed under Pol Pot’s regime.

Roxbury Latin students and adults benefitted from Mr. Chorn-Pond’s visit in great part due to the family of Andrew and Reis White, Class I, who have a long relationship with Cambodian Living Arts.