CA Reconnects During Reunion and Alum Weekend 2024

What a beautiful weekend it was to reunite in Concord, Mass.! From June 7 to 9, 2024, around 200 alums from across generations returned to Concord Academy. Reunion and Alum Weekend provided many opportunities for CA graduates and their families to connect through hands-on STEM activities, while biking around town, taking a dip in the pool, or borrowing a canoe for a paddle on the Sudbury River, and over good food and conversation. Classes ending in 4 and 9 that celebrated milestone reunions enjoyed special gatherings; others attended a reception for alums of color or enjoyed downtime on campus. Many joined student-led campus tours, hard-hat tours of the West Campus construction project highlighting its sustainability features, and CA faculty-led walking history tours in the town of Concord.

To offer a taste of the CA academic experience today, Robert Munro, assistant head for academics and equity, led a mini-class called Hermeneutics: Understanding Sacred Texts. Around 15 alums from the 1960s and 1970s joined this discussion of the lenses, including personal positionality and authorial provenance, we need to acknowledge when interpreting oral, written, and visual texts. Reflecting on one of Concord Academy’s early school seals, the group had a lively dialogue about symbolic representation. 

During the Alum Association Assembly, to which all CA alums were invited, Head of School Henry Fairfax delivered an update on continuing school traditions, enrollment, and the Centennial Campaign, among other topics. He and Jen Burleigh ’85 and Jennifer Pline P’13 ’15, co-presidents of the Board of Trustees, presented community feedback from this year’s strategic planning process and gave a high-level overview of strategic priorities, which the school will further develop this summer into a strategic plan. In her final public presentation as president of the Concord Academy Alum Association, Trelane Clark ’92, P’22, who continues to serve CA as a trustee, presented an update to the Alum Association bylaws introducing gender-inclusive terminology and oversaw the election of six new Alum Association officers, among them Natalie Krajcir ’02, Clark’s successor as the association’s president.

A highlight of the weekend was a panel discussion about a topic near and dear to CA: navigating the creative process. Several dozen people came to the library for the event, moderated by publisher Susan Knopf ’74. The conversation involved Anne Dowd ’74, an archaeologist, writer, and program manager with the National Park Service; Sarah Pillsbury ’69, an Academy Award-winning film producer; and Lesley Koenig ’74, a commissioner for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who spoke about her prior 37-year career as an opera director, which included more than 40 productions for the Metropolitan Opera. Together, the four alums talked about CA’s influence on their careers, the nature of their collaboration with colleagues, how they consider their audiences, and how criticism has influenced their creative decisions. 

What they shared about their experiences in divergent fields yielded some fascinating throughlines. For Dowd, archaeology and anthropology unite her love for both science and creativity, and her partnerships with Indigenous nations and fellow scholars reveal more about the world than she would see alone. She shared a story about drawing a Mayan architectural facade in the Mexican jungle, thinking she fully understood it; when, a few years later, a colleague pointed out a triplet pattern Dowd hadn’t previously noticed, she recognized the underlying poetic devices that structured the carving.

Pillsbury credited CA English teacher Richard Shohet P’82 ’84 ’87 with instilling in her the belief that “my mind was valuable.” Her career evolved from her love of movies and friendships with filmmakers and other creative professionals—rather than credit for artistic ideas, the appeal, she said, was the ability to “get involved with so many people’s minds.”

Koenig described how her capacious memory and facility with languages helped her succeed at the pinnacle of her creative field. She gave a vivid account of directing the multitude of contributions that an opera requires and shared how, in contrast with the directors she’d met early in her career, she always sat in the audience on opening night. “It’s easy to make an audience cry, … making them laugh is hard, but hearing their awe in reaction to something onstage, it’s magic,” she said. “It’s like they’re one huge organism.”

Amid the festivities and intellectual exchange, Reunion and Alum Weekend offered occasions for remembrance. A memorial service in the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel commemorated members of the CA community whose passing the school learned of within the previous year. And individual classes came together to honor and remember lifelong friendships.

A reception and dinner rounded out the program, with musical performances by longtime former faculty member Ross Adams, Jonathan Fagan ’11, and Gabriela Ruberto ’21. Fairfax made special note of an alum who had traveled from South Korea to attend and another, a member of the class of 1954, celebrating her 70th reunion. Tracy Welch ’89, P’23 ’24, the incoming co-chair of the Alum Annual Fund Committee, gave a shoutout to her former advisor and CA history teacher Bill Bailey, who was in attendance, and spoke to her love for Concord Academy: “One of the reasons I stay so involved is how much I love this school, and I’m so grateful for the outstanding education from the teachers who cared not just what we learned in the classroom but also about our well-being.”

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