How technology is shaping everything we do

In 1994, Jimmy Lin ’97 predicted that artificial intelligence, or AI, would become a reality during his lifetime. He was 15 and competing against a small group of engineers and computer scientists for the Loebner Prize, awarded to the person who creates the most human-like computer program. Lin’s program was designed to recognize and respond to familiar key words in human speech. “I hesitate to call it artificial intelligence,” he told reporters at the time. “I like to refer to it as a bag of tricks.”

Although Lin didn’t win the prize, his comment that his “bag of tricks” was a precursor to something bigger was prescient. “In the late 1990s, chatbots were weird,” Lin says. “Now, chatbots are just chatbots and of course we can talk to machines.”

Computer programming has been part of Lin’s life since he was a child. “Among my earliest memories are sitting on my dad’s lap in front of an Apple II computer, and that was back when you had to hook the phone line up to a modem,” he says.

Today he’s recognized globally for his AI research, focused on natural language processing and building out data systems. A professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Lin also co-directs the Waterloo Data and AI Institute. He’s chief scientist at Primal, a startup creating AI solutions for the legal and health care industries. “It’s my passion to share the power of generative AI,” he says.

The path to navigating the technology he says, is becoming AI literate. Lin coaches business and government leaders as well as educators — he has visited with Exeter students over the years — to understand AI and learn to use it. “The impact of generative AI will be no less than electricity and the steam engine,” he says. “As a society, we’ll be far richer for it.”

What is AI?

Once the purview of science fiction and dystopian movies, AI has become an integral part of our daily lives. Even if you don’t realize it, you have interacted with AI. It powers many behind-the-scenes processes, such as providing directions on your smartphone, assisting with online customer service or recommending movies on streaming services.

At its core, AI refers to a computer’s ability to mimic human capabilities like learning, problem solving and decision making. It can range from simple rule-based systems that follow basic “if-then” logic to more sophisticated algorithms that use reasoning to draw conclusions and make inferences from data. Large language models like ChatGPT are a type of AI designed to recognize, summarize, translate, predict and generate text and other content — including poems and college essays — based on user prompts or questions.

AI has also evolved to incorporate machine learning, in which computers can identify patterns in data and apply them to new tasks without being explicitly programmed for each one. In the case of a self-driving car, the car’s AI doesn’t just follow a preset route; it can assess traffic conditions, identify road hazards, recognize lights and pedestrians, and predict the fastest or safest route — all while making real-time decisions.

“What we thought of as AI in the 1950s and 1960s was based on algorithms: a sequence of steps to solve a problem,” says Vasu Parameswaran, chief technology officer and vice president of advanced development and science at percipient.ai. “But the real world is messy. It’s very difficult to mathematically model images. As computers became cheaper and data became more ubiquitous, the paradigm shifted to using neural networks to process information.”

A neural network is a machine learning model that makes decisions in a way that imitates the human brain. By simulating how biological neurons work together, it can identify patterns, weigh options and draw conclusions.

Exeter alumni are at the forefront of the AI transformation. This winter, more than 200 alumni gathered remotely for an industry panel about AI. Hosted by the Office of Institutional Advancement and moderated by Director of Studies Jeanette Lovett, the panel featured Joseph Ahn ’05, Ayush Noori ’20 and Trustee Christine Robson Weaver ’99. They had a lively discussion about the implications of AI as well as its benefits and risks. “AI is a huge democratization force,” Ahn says. “Its ability to equalize opportunities for people by giving them more information is exciting.”

We spoke with the panelists and others about the ways the technology is reshaping their professions as well as its promises and challenges.

AI and finance

AI has the potential to democratize financial processes, minimize paperwork and make Wall Street knowledge available to more people, Ahn says. For years, the finance industry has leveraged sophisticated analytics and data from AI to improve efficiency. The technology gives stock traders additional knowledge to inform decisions; it’s also used to detect and enhance consumer credit card fraud by monitoring for unusual usage patterns. But AI’s ability to collect and analyze large amounts of data makes it particularly useful to an industry that thrives on information.

Ahn and his brother, Daniel, run Delfi, what Ahn calls “the first AI investment bank.” The AI financial “copilot” they developed enables Delfi to deliver balance sheet hedging strategies and analytics for banks, credit unions and asset managers. “AI and machine learning risk management algorithms makes this type of analysis available to everyone, enabling them to make better investment decisions,” Ahn says. “Our business model wouldn’t exist without AI.” Currently, he says, 50% of the world’s GDP does not engage in capital markets. “That’s a missed opportunity,” he adds. “We can expand that up to at least 75%.”

AI also automates tasks like risk identification and quantification in the field of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Generative AI can examine public sources (like press releases, financial reports, prospectuses and more) for information on a specific company; it can also organize uploaded documents and screen for sensitive information, and analyze legal documents. With the increase in data access and resulting transactions, “I predict we’ll see smaller M&A firms created and more division of functions,” Ahn says.

He believes that AI’s greatest opportunity in financial services is financial literacy, enabling people to trade more effectively and make better investment decisions. More people than ever are participating in the stock market. “They should be given the tools to engage in it using best practices,” Ahn says. “A financial AI can tell you what choice to make and why. You’ll learn something from it even if you don’t agree.”

One challenge with using generative AI in the financial arena is overcoming privacy issues — for example, accessing sensitive financial data or exposing it through security breaches — and large language models’ tendency to “hallucinate,” or invent facts. Uneven access to the technology could expand the digital divide between modern and developing economies.

“I don’t know if we ever will be at the point where we’ll just trust financial AI to make all the decisions for us,” Ahn says. “But what it can do is democratize knowledge and best practices, and allow people to deal with the overwhelming amount of logistics and paperwork needed to execute a transaction.”

AI and national security

For decades, the American intelligence community has considered AI a critical tool to address national security threats. The U.S. military uses AI to create efficiencies in data analysis, procurement and more, says Creighton Reed ’90, a former Marine and a consultant in national security technology. “There’s been AI and machine learning to help sift and sort things in the intelligence world for a long time,” Reed says. “A lot of the technologies used by us now, such as GPS, email and the internet, was created by the military.”

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) started researching AI in 1958, when it formed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (known now as DARPA). In the 1990s, the U.S. military used an AI program called DART (Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool) to solve logistical challenges like moving supplies or personnel and saving millions of dollars. The military has also funded research into the development of autonomous cars as well as robots, and has used autonomous weapons like mines, torpedoes and heat-guided missiles in warfare.

More recently, DOD’s Project Maven uses machine learning and deep learning (algorithms that help computers recognize objects and text in images and videos) to help intelligence analysts sift through thousands of hours of video or photographs to find objects of interest. “AI doesn’t replace the analysts that review this information,” Reed says. “It helps them with the huge amounts of data they get on a daily basis and saves them time going through it.”

AI-powered weapons — drones and robots — are actively deployed in warfare. The U.S. military is also building unmanned aircraft, ground vehicles and submersibles for data collection and, potentially, strike capabilities. Because this technology is developed by industry and academic AI experts outside the military, it raises ethical questions about the ways AI research is used.

“There’s a growing understanding that we need to invest in AI because we are up against adversaries, or what we call peer competitors, who are rapidly advancing their capabilities in this realm,” Reed says. “The fear is that you’re taking a human out of the decision loop. What happens if that decision making is done by a computer?”

Now and for the immediate future, Reed says, humans are making those decisions

A student perspective on AI

When Sofiya Goncharova’25 noticed how immersed her peers and teachers were in AI, she decided to demystify the technology for others. For her senior project, she created Co[de]pendent: Living Alongside AI, a podcast she describes as a place “where we explore the quirks, questions and quiet revolutions of living in a world that’s not just human anymore.”

Goncharova’s interest in AI stemmed from research she did over the summer at Yale University’s Social Robotics Lab. Working on a study about human responses toward robots, she learned how manipulative AI technology can be. “We wanted to understand how people adjust their feedback based on how competent they think the robot is,” she says. “People’s sentiment about the robot would change depending upon the robot’s behavior. That got me thinking about AI and how it impacts us.”

An example of AI’s manipulative power are the algorithms used on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, she says, and how they shape what users see. “They actively steer our behavior by amplifying content that boosts engagement often in subtle or emotional ways,” Goncharova says. “I see that kind of influence in how quickly narratives or trends catch on with my peers, often without them realizing it. That deeply impacted how I view AI and inspired me to create the podcast.”

Goncharova’s podcasts, developed in consultation with Computer Science Instructor El Kaplan and Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Chair Tom Simpson, address timely AI topics. She examines the effect of AI on art with photographer and artist Derin Korman, a photography teacher at the Commonwealth School in Boston. Korman trained a machine learning model to compare his original work with the AI-generated work. “The takeaway is that you need to know your intention with using AI and acknowledge that it’s part of your work,” Goncharova says.

In other episodes, she tackles the influence of AI on politics (“The EU is much further ahead of the U.S. in terms of legal controls on AI,” she says) and has a conversation with Director of Studies Jeanette Lovett on AI’s effects on education and the workforce. “My goal is not to lead to conclusions,” Goncharova says. “I just want to inform people about the concepts.”

Listen to the Co[de]pendent: Living Alongside AI podcast

AI and healthcare

AI is being used in the health care industry in increasingly novel ways. With 4.5 billion people worldwide lacking access to essential medical services and a health worker shortage of 11 million anticipated by 2030, according to the World Health Organization, AI can help bridge the gaps.

“I’m excited about how we can use AI to advance scientific discovery and enable personalized, effective health care,” says Ayush Noori ’20, a Harvard University senior and Rhodes scholar, who is developing AI tools to personalize diagnostics for people with neurological disorders and participated in the Exeter panel. “AI will better help us understand disease pathobiology and work towards novel diagnostic and therapeutic options.”

This work is being done at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, where Noori and a team of researchers developed machine learning-based methods (called a natural language processing-powered annotation tool) to review data and clinical notes, creating a faster, more reliable method of determining whether a patient has dementia or other types of cognitive impairment. A team of scientists and clinicians at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, including Noori, are training large AI models to predict drug repurposing and develop more effective treatments for bipolar disorder.

I’m excited about how we can use AI to advance scientific discoveries and enable personalized, effective health care.

Ayush Noori ’20

In addition to breakthroughs in diagnoses and treatments, AI is being leveraged to improve clinical care. “Eighty-one percent of doctors say they’re overworked; that affects their patient care,” Noori says. An AI model can be used as a clinical assistant to handle paperwork or do deep research on medical abstracts and more. As of this year, Noori says, 183 health care systems and providers across the U.S. have piloted or adopted 70 generative AI applications for tasks including clinical decision support, patient communication, clinical documentation, claims processing and health care administration.

For all its advances, AI-based clinical support systems that advance the quality and delivery of health care are still works in progress. “There’s always a human component to medicine,” Noori says. “AI won’t replace doctors, but it can make their jobs easier.” It will potentially relieve doctors of paperwork and other burdens, and help patients better navigate the medical system — paradoxically, making it more human.

AI and the future

AI is here and it’s changing everything we do, including how we bank, interact with our doctors and shop. (The use of AI in retail is predicted to grow to $54.92 billion by 2033 from $11.83 billion in 2024). As with any disruptive societal change, the technology raises questions about inaccuracy, biases, privacy, copyright and more. “What happens if generative artificial intelligence improves things across the board but creates a gap in access, for example, between men and women?” says Trustee Christine Robson Weaver ’99, a data product lead at Google who was a panelist. “You have to set a higher bar for the technology.”

Most of the leading companies creating AI technologies — including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI — have developed mission statements that outline their goals for using AI. Weaver was on an internal Google team that developed the firm’s AI principles based on improving the user experience while protecting their safety. “There is so much science fiction around AI and so many issues that people think about,” she says. “I favor AI safety decisions that are tactical, like AI alignment. Does the model do what I say it’s going to do most of the time? I’m interested in how it interacts with users.”

She favors the use of policy “layers” that define safety at different levels, both at the corporate level and through individual product policies. Those layers act as a final check before exposing the product to end users. “Having access to quality data is important for the development of AI models,” Weaver says. “Having compliant-safe data and the right tools to work with that data and track what’s being done is critical.”

Karl Cobbe ’09, a research scientist at Open AI, which created ChatGPT, shares Weaver’s concerns about the data that feeds the AI models and the validity of what the models churn out. “A big issue with large learning models are hallucinations: They make up facts,” Cobbe says. “We’re trying to make the models better at reasoning.”

AI development also taxes natural resources. According to the Allen Institute for AI, one query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as one lightbulb for 20 minutes. Each question a chatbot receives is routed to a data center, which uses a lot of energy and contributes to greenhouse emissions. Google and other tech companies are still engaging with that problem.

Exeter alumni working in and around AI are excited about its potential and cognizant of its risks. “We as a society need to grapple with the question of whether AI will take people’s jobs,” Cobbe says. “Progress made in the last four years is astonishing, and no one says it’s going to slow down.”

As the technology rapidly evolves, everyone should be familiar with what it is and offers, Jimmy Lin ’97 says. “The moment you hand your child an iPad, you’re giving them a tool with AI on it. You need to be aware of the potentially toxic content and the biases the technology has. Everyone from kindergarten age up to seniors needs to know how AI works and its effect on them.”

A brief history of artificial intelligence

1796

Jonathan Swift’s satiric novel, Gulliver’s Travels, refers to the Engine, a large contraption used by scholars to generate new ideas, sentences and books.

1950

British mathematician Alan Turing publishes an academic paper addressing whether machines can think. He developed the Turing Test, a way to measure machine intelligence by assessing its ability to mimic human conversation and behavior. (The Loebner Prize competition is based on the Turing Test.)

1956

Dartmouth College mathematics professor John McCarthy coins the term “artificial intelligence” during the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, a conference exploring how machines could simulate human intelligence.

1958

Perceptron, the first artificial neural network, is developed by American psychologist Frank Rosenblatt. The program makes decisions in a way similar to the human brain. It can distinguish between punch cards marked on the left and right and is described by its creator as the first machine capable of having an original idea.

1960

Adaline (Adaptive Linear Neuron), a single-layer artificial neural network, is developed by Stanford University professor Bernard Widrow and his student Marcian Hoff. It’s an adaptive system for pattern recognition and the foundation for future advances in neural network and machine learning.

1997

Deep Blue, developed by IBM, is the first computer system to defeat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. The computer’s underlying technology advances the ability of supercomputers to tackle complex calculations to perform tasks like uncovering patterns in databases.

2012

AlexNet, a deep learning neural network with eight layers, is a breakthrough in image recognition, identifying images of dogs and cars at a level similar to humans.

2017

Google Research develops Transformer, a neural network architecture that can train a computer to recognize the next word in a chain of words.

2019

OpenAI’s Generative Pretrained Transformer 2 (or GPT-2) demonstrates the power of natural language processing. GPT-2 is able to predict the next item in a sequence, perform tasks such as summarizing and translating text. GPT-3, introduced in 2020, is able to produce text often indistinguishable from human writing.

2021

DALL-E, a neural network that creates pictures from language prompts is introduced by Open AI.

2022

ChatGPT, Open AI’s chatbot, built on a large language model, introduces generative AI, which can create new content based on existing data. It can produce text, images, videos, audio and more.

2023

Google Labs releases Notebook LM, which summarizes up to 50 sources, including documents, videos and books.

2024

Using Google’s AI algorithms, Google Research and Harvard publish the first synaptic resolution of the human brain. Open AI releases Sora, an AI tool that creates videos from text, images and other video.

Debbie Kane is a longtime contributor to The Exeter Bulletin. Her work has also appeared in AIA NH Forum, New Hampshire Home and NewHampshire Magazine.

This article was originally published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Examining the Academy’s connections to slavery and its path forward

Her name was Dinah, and she lived with a man named Cuffee on the edge of the thick woodland that once covered the Academy fields, just steps from where The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance now stands. In the mid-19th century, the elderly Dinah made a living selling cake and ale to the boys who attended the Academy, as well as any others who made the pleasant walk from the center of town to Cuffee’s Woods, as they were known.

By 1879, when a local resident recounted his memories of Dinah and Cuffee in the Exeter News-Letter, the couple had long since died, leaving few traces of their presence behind. But Dinah’s story is worth remembering not only for its connection to the history of Exeter — the town and the school — and her role in the day-to-day lives of some of the earliest students at Phillips Exeter Academy. As a young woman, she was one of several individuals previously acknowledged in Academy histories to have been enslaved by Exeter’s founder, John Phillips.

In January 2020, with the support of Exeter’s Trustees, Principal Bill Rawson ’71 announced the formation of a steering committee to examine the ties between Phillips Exeter Academy and the institution of slavery. At the time, he wrote, “The work contemplated by this charge will provide a more complete and complex understanding of the early history of our school, will expand the voices involved in helping us understand and tell that history, and thereby will advance the mission and values of our school and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and a deep sense of belonging for all members of our community.”

But the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the committee’s progress. In May 2023, Rawson issued an expanded charge fort he Committee to Study Slavery and Its Legacy at Exeter, co-led by Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett and Magee Lawhorn, head of Archives and Special Collections, and made up of Exeter faculty, staff, alumni and students. That fall, the committee embarked on the first phase of that charge, which included reporting on the known information about Exeter’s history and connection with enslaved people; developing recommendations for appropriate recognition to help the community understand this history; and collaborating with the Exeter Historical Society to incorporate the history of enslaved people in the town of Exeter.

“Telling these stories is a way to honor the people who made Exeter what it is today,” Bramlett says. “It’s powerful to know the stories of the people who came before us, and to consider the way their legacy shapes our current experiences.”

In undertaking this effort, Exeter joined a growing movement among educational institutions. When Universities Studying Slavery, a consortium led by the University of Virginia, expanded its membership to private high schools, the Academy signed up, as did peer schools including Andover and Loomis Chaffee. The consortium has more than 100 members in six countries, including Brown, Georgetown and Harvard.

Histories of the Academy have documented John Phillips’ ownership of several individuals during much of his life, including 1781, the year he founded Exeter with his second wife, Elizabeth. Although slavery does not appear to have been associated with the physical construction of the school and he was not an enslaver at the time of his death, “that [John Phillips] owned and kept slaves for at least a part of his life, with no thought of there being anything morally wrong about it, is a matter of record,” Laurence M. Crosbie wrote in The Phillips Exeter Academy: A History, published in 1923.

Oil painting of John Phillips by Joseph Steward

In 1743, Phillips married his first wife, Sarah Gilman, the widow of his cousin Nathaniel Gilman, who had owned and operated a general store. Sarah, who was 16 years older than Phillips, brought her significant estate into the marriage, including three enslaved individuals: Robin, Phillis and Dinah.

Among wealthy white New Englanders of his time, Phillips was far from unique. As historian Wendy Warren wrote in her 2016 book, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, by the early 18th century “slavery was embedded in the New England colonies, an accepted and familiar part of the society.”

Instructor in History Kent McConnell, a member of the Exeter steering committee to study slavery, says, “Many men of [Phillips’] stature would have owned enslaved persons.” He adds that many men would have similarly inherited themas part of their wives’ dowries, a common way of ensuring financial security at the time. “There’s so much profit being generated around chattel slavery,” he says. “It’s part of a global economic system that deeply reaches into the lives of the colonies in so many ways.”

As the Revolutionary War dawned, attitudes toward the institution of slavery began to change. “White enslavers are struggling — in varying degrees, obviously, but they can’t ignore the realities of the proclamation of ‘all men are created equal,’ ” McConnell says. Antislavery sentiment built across New England in the 1770s, and individual states — beginning with Vermont in 1777 — passed laws to restrict slavery.

Sometime in the late 1770s, Phillips most likely joined a growing movement among New England slave owners by manumitting, or granting freedom to, at least some of his enslaved people. By 1778 — three years before he and Elizabeth signed the founding documents of theAcademy — neither Phillis nor Dinah was part of the Phillips household. Crosbie wrote that town records show Phillips was taxed for two male enslaved people from 1778 to 1780, and for one from 1781to 1785. When he died in 1795, Phillips owned no enslaved people; his will stated, “I give to my man-servant (Slave I have none) such part of my wearing apparel as my Executor shall think fit.”

Among the untold stories the steering committee seeks to illuminate are the lives of the men and woman Phillips enslaved. From the Exeter News-Letter article and other contemporary accounts, we know a fair amount about Dinah’s later life and interactions with early Academy students. The historical record contains less information about the two other individuals Phillips acquired in the 1740s with his first wife’s estate. Phillis, described in Nathaniel Gilman’s will as“my Negro woman,” was most likely older than Dinah, who was described in that will as “the Negro girl named Dinah.” A Gilman family history later stated that Phillis was a gift to another Gilman relative in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, around 1771.

Information is notably lacking about Robin. Unlike Phillis and Dinah, he does not appear in the Gilman family genealogy but was probably enslaved by Phillips for more than three decades. Judging from Exeter tax records, Robin was most likely the last individual Phillips enslaved, and he was either emancipated or died around 1785.

A stereograph image of the third Academy building from the 1880s

The fourth individual Phillips enslaved— believed to be the second enslaved person he paid taxes on in the late 1770s —was a man named Corydon. No records have been found to indicate when or where Corydon was born, and how Phillips came to enslave him. Corydon was not among the individuals Sarah Gilman inherited from her late husband. Crosbie wrote, “In his day-book, kept late in life, [Phillips] speaks frequently … of his black man, Corydon, whom he hired out at various times to the Gilmans, when he himself had no work for him.” After Phillips granted him his freedom, likely around1780 or 1781, Corydon appears to have lived as a boarder in Exeter with Hannah (Merrill) Holland, a free Black woman, and her daughter, Catherine.

Corydon, who survived Phillips bymore than two decades, is believed to have lived more than 100 years. In Corydon’s later life, Crosbie recorded, Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy paid his living expenses; Exeter paid two-thirds of the total cost and Andover the remaining one-third. Records in the Academy archives show invoices related to this financial support, with the last one dated April 1, 1818, the date of Corydon’s death.

In investigating the stories of these four enslaved individuals linked to Exeter’s early history, the committee relied not only on previously published histories of the Academy, but also on the work of Barbara Rimkunas, curator of the Exeter Historical Society, who has worked with her staff to compile numerous stories about Black residents of Exeter in the Revolutionary War period and beyond. As a commercial and political center of the region at the time, Exeter had a relatively large free Black community after the war, reaching nearly 5% of the town’s population — the largest percentage in New Hampshire at the time.

Committee resources also included research by Alexanderia Baker Haidara ’99 and a senior project by Andrew Yuan ’24, titled “Legacy of Slavery at Phillips Exeter Academy, 1770-1870.” Yuan, who completed the project as part of a research-focused history course during his upper year and served on the student branch of the committee on slavery, was inspired by similar efforts at Harvard and other institutions to begin looking into Exeter’s connections to slavery, both around the time of its founding and through its early decades.

“It’s a part of history that has not been recognized as it should have been,” Yuan said in 2024. “There was a need to really get down in the archives to know what went down during the years of Exeter’s founding as an institution, how slavery shaped it and how we as a community are reconciling with that fact.”

Telling these stories is a way to honor the people who made Exeter what it is today.

Stephanie Bramlett, director of Equity and Inclusion

Just as Crosbie in 1923 acknowledged John Phillips’ ownership of enslaved people, later chroniclers of the school’s history have shed light on sometimes difficult truths about minority representation at Exeter through the years. The Committee to Study Slavery and Its Legacy at Exeter has also made efforts to further illuminate the experiences of early generations of Black students at Exeter, and to share some of their largely untold stories.

Moses Uriah Hall, who came to the Academy in 1858 and fought in the Civil War after his graduation in 1861, was previously reported (including in this magazine) to be Exeter’s first Black student. But as Julia Heskel and Davis Dyer wrote in After the Harkness Gift: A History of Phillips Exeter Academy Since 1930 (2008), “many believe that blacks were enrolled in the school as early as 1790.” They note that formal student records were lacking until the mid-19th century. And current Academy archivists say that explicit collection of student racial identification data did not begin until the late 1990s.

After the Harkness Gift: A History of Phillips Exeter Academy Since 1930, by Julia Heskel and Davis Dyer

By the late 19th century, Exeter saw a growing number of Black students, many of whom lived in a boarding house owned by J.W. Field. They represented a small minority of the student population, but a number of these early Black Exonians became leaders on campus and went onto distinguished careers.

Although it’s difficult to cite exact figures, given the nature of student records at the time, the number of Black Exonians appears to have declined after the first decade of the 20th century and did not begin to rise until the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.

This lack of racial diversity at Exeter reflected a much larger societal shift in the country. After the collapse of Reconstruction, many Southern states enacted legislation that restricted the freedom, safety and economic opportunity of Black citizens. As a result, beginning in 1910, millions of African Americans left the South and moved to urban centers in the North, Midwest and West, a so-called Great Migration that transformed the country.

An escape from the Jim Crow South did not mean freedom from racial prejudice.The years after World War I saw a sharp increase in racial violence, with riots breaking out in Chicago and other cities. The widespread success of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation — screened at the White House and praised by President Woodrow Wilson — helped legitimize the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. The Birth of a Nation was also the first film shown at the Ioka Theater in downtown Exeter when it opened in November 1915. As Rimkunas reported in the Exeter News-Letter in 2015, the advertising campaign for that debut featured several costumed Klansmen riding around town on horseback.

In addition to this complicated historical context, Heskel and Dyer explore one explanation for the limited number of Black students at Exeter during the first half of the 20th century: the per-onal views of Principal Lewis Perry, wholed the Academy from 1914 to 1946. The authors drew on the words of Perry’s successor as principal, William G. Saltonstall, who weighed in on what he called the“sensitive” subject of minority representation at Exeter in his 1980 biography, Lewis Perry of Exeter: A Gentle Memoir.

“Blacks had attended Exeter long before Perry’s time and done well,” Saltonstall wrote. He then quoted from a letter Perry wrote in March 1936 to his longtime correspondent Vernon Munroe, a graduate of the class of 1892 who served as president of Exeter’s General Alumni Association. Perry had received a missive from Lucien V. Alexis, a Black alumnus of the class of 1914 who appears to have inquired about sending his son to the Academy.

“We have not had any colored boys in school for eight or ten years,” Perry wrote to Munroe in the letter, which is included in Perry’s correspondence files in the Academy archives. “Now the intimacy of the Harkness Plan, with all the boys in our own dormitories, makes things still more difficult. Frankly, I have learned enough about the school since I have been here to be very sure that a colored boy is hurt rather than helped by his entrance into Exeter.”

To support his position, as chronicled by Saltonstall and later by Heskeland Dyer, Perry cited advice that he said Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had once given Al Stearns, who was principal of Andover from 1903 to 1933. Washington,Perry wrote, had told Stearns that “it was a great mistake for colored boys to come to either Exeter or Andover.”

Washington, who died in 1915, was probably the most prominent Black thinker in the country when he gave that advice. Having shot to fame with the publication of his autobiography, Up From Slavery, he wrote and spoke extensively about his belief that Black Americans should pursue training in trades like carpentry, mechanics and farming. He saw this as a crucial way for them to attain employment and economic stability without actively challenging the segregationist systems of the time. (Washington’s own son, Booker T. Washington Jr., attended Exeter for a time but left in 1907 before graduating. According to a report in the New York Times, Principal Harlan Amen denied that his departure was due to racial discrimination, stating that the younger Washington had left after being ordered to “confine himself in his dormitory certain hours for study.”)

Washington’s views had put him at odds with Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, who argued against racial segregation and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). But they struck a chord with Stearns, who — like Perry — grappled with the question of minority students at the school he led.

In Youth From Every Quarter: A Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy Andover (1979), Frederick S. Allis cited a letter Stearns wrote in 1928. In it, Stearns explained that in his early years as principal, he “fought vigorously for the colored boys in our midst and for those who sought to enter.” Later, Stearns began to doubt that position, writing that it seemed “these fellows were being harmed more than helped by the school.”

Stearns sought advice not only from Washington, but also from Hollis B. Frissell, a white Andover alumnus who served as principal of the historically Black Hampton Institute in Virginia; both men helped confirm his later perspective. From 1910 until Stearns’ tenure ended 23 years later, only one African American student graduated from Andover, according to “Our DEI History,” published on the school’s website. (In 2021, Andover introduced its Committee on Challenging Histories, the equivalent of Exeter’s committee.)

In his biography of Perry, Saltonstall wrote with warmth and admiration, calling him one of “the great headmasters who led their schools for decades and shaped much of independent secondary education in the twentieth century.” Thanks to Perry’s leadership, along with the revolutionary $5.8 million gift from the philanthropist Edward Harkness, Saltonstall wrote, Exeter embarked on “anew era of education,” transforming thes chool into what it would become today.

Yet when it came to the “question of minority representation at Exeter,” Saltonstall was no less direct. “Even within the context of [Perry’s] day this was a blind spot,” he wrote. “While it may not be fair to judge a person by the standards of a different age, Perry denied Exeter’s democratic tradition in permitting limits on the numbers of blacks and Jews in the academy. He never specifically discussed quotas of any kind, but he did suggest that limits would be advisable.

The Alexis family: Lucien V. Alexis Jr., class of 1938; Lucien V. Alexis, class of 1914; and Lucien V. Alexis III, class of 1973

This difficult history is reflected in the stories of two early Black Exonians and their sons, who sought to attend the Academy during the later years of Perry’s principalship. The first was Lucien V. Alexis, the alumnus from theAcademy’s class of 1914 whose letter to Perry prompted Perry’s correspondence with Munroe in March 1936. Then in early 1940, Eugene Clark, class of 1904, wrote to Perry regarding his son, Eugene Clark Jr. Alexis attended Exeter for one year before going to Harvard, where he graduated cum laude in 1917. When he wrote toPerry, Alexis was the founding principal of McDonogh 35 Senior High School, the first (and at the time only) public high school for Black students in Louisiana.

The Academy archives did not record Perry’s response, but Lucien V. Alexis Jr. ’38 arrived at Exeter not long after. Heskeland Dyer wrote that the younger Alexis was not permitted to live in a dormitory, so he lived with the track coach, Ralph Lovshin, who also experienced marginalization as a Roman Catholic during his early years at Exeter.

Alexis, who joined the fencing team, was the only Black student in his graduating class at Exeter. He then became the only Black student in Harvard’s class of 1942, and the first Black player on the university’s lacrosse team.

On April 16, 1941, The Exonian published a letter to the editors from Maurice Rashbaum Jr. ’41. “A week ago Saturday, Rashbaum wrote, “an event happened which I believe should be brought to the attention of every Exonian who believes… that men of all races, creeds, and colors should be treated alike.” Rashbaum referred to the Harvard lacrosse team’s trip to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The Navy coach refused to let his team play against Harvard if Alexis was on the field. The Harvard coach stood his ground, but the university’s athletic director overruled him, and Alexis was forced to head back to Cambridge while his teammates took the field without him (Navy won, 12-0).

The incident made national news, The Harvard Gazette reported, inspiring public recriminations against both Harvard and Navy. Rashbaum joined in this outcry, arguing that “there certainly ought to be published a public apology by Navy for this ineffaceable blot on the honor of our country.” When Alexis and his team traveled to West Point, New York, to play the U.S. Military Academy a week later, Black cadets led a cheering group that welcomed them.

Alexis was later accepted to Harvard Medical School but was told he could not attend because the incoming class had no other Black student for him to room with. He returned to New Orleans, where he ran a small business college — and sent two sons to Exeter, Lucien ’73 and Llewllyn ’74. Last fall, Harvard honored him with a portrait inits Agassiz Theatre as part of the Portraiture Project of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Two years after Alexis graduated from Exeter, Perry appears to have discouraged Clark from sending his son to theAcademy. During his time there, Clark lived with other Black students in J.W.Field’s boardinghouse. After graduation, he began a distinguished career in education and retired in 1953 as president of Miner Teachers College, a historic center of Black education in Washington, D.C.

“My dear Dr. Perry,” Clark wrote. “I wish to acknowledge your kind letter of March 13, 1940, in which you very frankly explain the situation at Exeter with reference to colored students. From your description of conditions I agree with you that it would be unwise for me to send Eugene to the Academy.”

“However, as an alumnus of Exeter,” Clark continued, “I believe that it would be decidedly beneficial to the general student body at Exeter to have a few well-selected colored boys in their midst and living under normal conditions, for the boys at Exeter will ultimately be leaders in their various life activities and should have as part of their education an opportunity to develop tolerance and the democratic way of living.”

A Home for Early Black Exonians

By the 1890s, Exeter had two permanent dormitories on campus — Abbot Hall, opened in 1855, and Soule Hall, opened in 1894 — but was not yet a fully residential school. Those who did not live in the dorms rented rooms from families in and around Exeter.

Many of the Academy’s early Black students rented rooms in the same home, owned by local businessman James William Field, a member of Exeter’s class of 1890. Listed in student directories in the PEAN yearbook as “J.W. Field’s House,” the building also housed Field’s business, where he traded and sold furniture, carpets, rugs and other home goods and offered repair and packing services.

Here are a few of the Exonians who lived at 248 Water Street and some information about their lives.

Roscoe Conkling Bruce, class of 1898

The son of a Reconstruction-era U.S. senator from Mississippi, Bruce arrived at Exeter in 1896 from Washington,D.C. In his two years at Exeter, he joined the Golden Branch debating society and was elected to The Exonian’s board of editors. He later won numerous awards for orating and debating at Harvard. After serving as academic director of the Tuskegee Institute, he worked as a principal in the District of Columbia public school system, eventually rising to assistant superintendent of the district’s African American schools.

John Tazewell Jones, class of 1900

Jones, who hailed from Old Point Comfort, Virginia, isbelieved to be Exeter’s first Black four-year varsity athlete.He excelled in football and track at the Academy beforegoing on to play football at Harvard College. At Harvard,Jones befriended Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future U.S.president, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Around 1917, Jonesmoved to Brazil, where he worked for more than two decades as a businessrepresentative for U.S. firms.

Ernest Marshall, class of 1904

Marshall came from Baltimore and spent three defining years at the Academy. He was highly regarded by his peers and was the first Black student to be elected as a captain of an athletic team in the Academy’s history. Marshall set records in track and field and captained the football team in 1903. He continued his education at Williams College, University of Michigan and the University of Chicago before becoming one of the first Black graduates of Northwestern Medical School. Marshall went on to find professional success as a professor, coach and physician. (For more about Marshall, read “Strength and Character” in the Fall 2023 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Benjamin Seldon, class of 1907

A native of New Jersey, Seldon was a member of Exeter’s football team. During his time at Exeter, he wrote to prominent sociologist and writer W.E.B. Du Bois, author of the influential essay collection The Souls of Black Folk. “I feel it is just the book that every Negro should possess, therefore I am desirous of becoming an agent for it,” Seldon wrote. This correspondence led to decades of communication and collaboration, as Seldon joined Du Bois’ pursuit of Pan-Africanism, or efforts to unify people of African descent around the world. After supporting U.S. troops as an executive secretary for the YMCA during World War I, Seldon spent time traveling in Europe and doing scholarly work at the University of Toulouse. Back in the United States, he oversaw the Negro Adult Education program of the Works Progress Administration in New Jersey in the 1930s, and later held a post in the War Finance Division of the U.S. Treasury Department.

— Panos Voulgaris

The Committee to Study Slavery and Its Legacy at Exeter continues to explore and celebrate the stories of Black alumni like Lucien Alexis Sr. and Jr. and Eugene Clark, and to fully recognize their contributions to the life and history of Exeter. As it moves into the second phase of Rawson’s 2023 charge, the committee will study and acknowledge the early generations of Black students at Exeter, and offer suggestions for further examination of their experiences and those of other historically marginalized groups.

This includes an effort — begun at the 55th anniversary celebration for the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society in2023 — to record the oral histories of students of color to include in Exeter’s institutional memory. Magee Lawhorn, co-head of the committee and director of Archives and Special Collections, is spearheading this endeavor.

“It’s really about capturing these stories for people who come after us,” Lawhorn says. “Often with history, you get photographs, you get paper, but you don’t always get the person talking about themselves, and I think that’s really important.”

Eric Logan ’92, chair of the Trustees’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, says: “The idea of youth from every quarter, of Harkness — all of that is centered in having different people who can have broad discussions around a given fact basis. Being able to fill in gaps in the history of Exeter is critical to us being able to do what we do as Exonians, which is sit around a table and discuss the implications of that history, both then and now.”

A particular area of interest for the Trustees, Logan believes, is ensuring amore complete understanding of the school’s history as Exeter approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding in 2031. “It’s important for us to understand the facts, to know who we as an institution are,” Logan says. “When you look at a school with the history and legacy of Exeter, history means a lot, and it’s important that we can be as robust as possible with the history that we tell.

Members of the Committee to Study Slavery and Its Legacy at Exeter, or CSSLE: (back row) Sarah Pruitt ’95; Panos Voulgaris, instructor in physical education and varsity football coach; Kent McConnell, instructor in history; Magee Lawhorn, CSSLE co-head and head of Archives and Special Collections; Kevin Pajaro-Mariñez, assistant director of equity and inclusion; (front row) Laura Wood, director of the Class of 1945 Library; Stephanie Bramlett, CSSLE co-head and director of equity and inclusion

The committee shared some of the results of its work in a school assembly in January that aimed to raise student awareness and understanding of Exeter’s history with slavery and its legacy. In the presentation, co-heads Stephanie Bramlett and Lawhorn, and other committee members, shared some of the “untold stories” they have been exploring. They include Robin, Phillis, Dinah and Corydon, as well as Moses Hall, class of 1861, and some of the Black Exonians from the late 19th and early 20th century. They also explained the committee’s charge, in the context of similar initiatives at institutions around the country, and emphasized the importance of every Exonian’s story.

“All of us have these stories that contribute to this broader Exeter legacy and Exeter experience,” Logan says. “I think it heightens every student’s experience to understand where they lie on this continuum of the history of the Academy.”

At the end of the assembly, students and faculty gathered in Elm Street Dining Hall to enjoy some cake and “ale” (cider) in tribute to Dinah. Lawhorn researched recipes for traditional African American dishes and worked with Dining Services to create the community event.

“It was powerful to learn about these stories,” Andrew Voulgarelis ’25 says, “and to see how the community was focused on trying to learn as much as possible about this small group of people who made a big difference at the Academy, and helped make it what it is today.”

Sarah Pruitt ’95 is a staff writer for The Exeter Bulletin and a member of the Committee to Study Slavery and Its Legacy at Exeter.

This article was originally published in the spring edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Rawson announces plan to retire in 2026

Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08 announced to the greater Exeter community Friday that he intends to retire after the 2025-26 academic year.

In a brief address to students, which was met with a long and loud standing ovation, and in a letter to the Exeter community, Rawson said it was “understandably bittersweet” that he informed the Trustees of his intentions to step down after next year.

Rawson was formally appointed the school’s 16th principal on Jan. 25, 2019, after serving in the position in an interim role. As he spoke to students Friday in Assembly Hall, he referred to his remarks that day and the deep personal significance the moment held for him.

“I spoke about how my time at Exeter as a student had transformed my life, and how it was deeply meaningful to me to have the opportunity, as principal, to help Exeter do the same for all of you,” Rawson said. “It has indeed been deeply meaningful to me to serve this school as your principal and help all of you learn, grow and thrive in all the ways that make Exeter so special.”

Rawson told the students, “I say to you all the time that you all belong here. I have felt since my days as a student, and now as your principal, that I too belong here. But what was initially intended to be a two-year assignment has become an eight-year assignment, and I feel the time is right for me and for the school to make the transition to new leadership.”

“Since his arrival in 2018, Bill has provided steady, thoughtful leadership, guiding Exeter through both challenges and progress with an unwavering dedication to our mission and values,” Trustee President Kristyn McLeod Van Ostern ’96 wrote in a letter to the community.

“Under Bill’s guidance, Exeter has thrived as a place where knowledge and goodness live together. His commitment to inclusion has strengthened our sense of belonging, while his forward-thinking approach to sustainability and campus stewardship has positioned Exeter for long-term success. His constant presence at student performances, athletic competitions, and academic events reflects his deep joy in seeing students shine — not just in the classroom, but in every aspect of their Exeter experience.”

It has indeed been deeply meaningful to me to serve this school as your principal and help all of you learn, grow and thrive in all the ways that make Exeter so special.

Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08

A committee led by Trustee Janney Wilson ’83 will commence a broad and inclusive search to find his successor.

Rawson’s tenure has included the school’s historic transition to a need-blind admissions process and the adoption of its first climate action and sustainability plan. He redoubled efforts to create a strong sense of belonging for all members of the community. He also helped the school navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, christened the Academy’s first new dorm construction in 50 years and new dining center and mapped out an exciting makeover of the Academy Building, work that is schedule to begin this summer.

“Principal Rawson has given our community worthy service during his tenure,” said Dean of Faculty Eimer Page. “He strives daily to create meaningful connections with staff at the lunch table, families over dinner or on the sidelines, students in their rehearsals, practices, club meetings and performances, and faculty in every aspect of our work. He feels a deep sense of connection to the school and is unique in having been a student, an alumnus, a faculty member, a trustee, a parent and our principal. He exemplifies the principle of non sibi and we are deeply grateful to him for his stewardship of our school. He leaves us stronger, more connected with one another, better-resourced and full of genuine gratitude to him.”

Assistant Principal Karen Lassey added, “The entire Academy community has benefitted from Principal Rawson’s selfless commitment and principled leadership. I am grateful for all I have learned from him personally and know that his impact on so many others has been just as transformative, if not more so.”

Rawson closed his remarks Friday by telling the students, “I will be with you all of this year and next year, and as long as I am your principal, I will do all I can to support you and help you thrive at Exeter.”

Clare McCann ’26 said, “Principal Rawson has been an avid supporter of me (and my brother and sister before me), always showing up to volleyball practices and games whenever he could. I’m so glad he’ll still be here to hand me my diploma!”

Rawson concluded by saying, “I have said that I believe that human connection is the foundation of everything important that we do in our lives. I feel deeply connected to this school and to all of you. It is a great joy to be your principal.”

Then the principal tapped his microphone and closed assembly.

“Senior class.”

Going the distance

From the Ironman World Championship to the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, Heather Jackson '02 on winning, losing and growing as a professional athlete

Heather Jackson ’02 has a system for packing, honed after years of globetrotting. One bag contains wetsuits and goggles. Another holds bicycle shorts, sunglasses and anti-chafe tape. Her running shoes go into a third bag. She also brings a pillow, to ensure a proper night’s sleep. That was an especially important piece of luggage as she prepared to fly across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii with a uniquely grueling intention.

When the sun rose over Hualālai on October 6, 2022, Jackson and 49 other female professional racers would begin the Ironman World Championship triathlon. The race started with a 2.4-mile swim across Kailua Bay, followed by a 112-mile bike ride through the lava fields along the coastline on the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway. The final challenge — a 26.2-mile run to Kona — led to a finish line flanked by tropical flowers and roaring spectators.

Race day in 2022 — the first year the World Championship was split into separate men’s and women’s races — was Jackson’s sixth time on the course. But this time, Kona was sweltering, with only a faint breeze. As Jackson huffed past Pahoehoe Beach, the halfway point on the running course, she braced herself for an agonizing three-mile stretch known as the Energy Lab where racers are exposed to some of the strongest, skin-crisping sun rays anywhere in the United States.

Sweat flying, lungs burning from a recent case of COVID-19, Jackson knew she would finish. She had placed among the top five women four times at Kona. But this time, something was different. Jackson was tired, and not just tired in the expected ways. “There was a sense of bittersweetness,” she says. “I was glad to be there, but I knew that this was the last one.”

This Ironman was the closing chapter of Jackson’s triathlon career. At the age of 38, she had “retired” from the regimented training that occupied her waking hours. But she was approaching a far more intimidating juncture: what comes after being a champion.

“The training is all consuming,” says Heather Jackson ’02, pictured here on a ride in the Oregon woods.

Part I: A triathlete is born

When Jackson recalls her childhood, many memories are rooted in the woods, fields and streets of Exeter: being outdoors, moving around and loving it. “I was one of four kids, and growing up, we’d get out of school and then we would pretty much be outside playing street hockey or playing tag until dinner,” Jackson says. “I remember our mom saying, ‘Be home before the streetlights come on.’ That was the rule.”

Jackson’s family lived one mile from the Academy campus, where she enrolled as a day student in 1998 and honed her ice hockey skills. “When I thought about what kind of career I wanted, I assumed I would end up coaching at a school,” Jackson says. “There weren’t a lot of options after college if you were a woman playing ice hockey. The thought of actually becoming a professional athlete had never crossed my mind as something that was possible.”

After graduating from Princeton in 2006 with a dual degree in political science and East Asian studies, Jackson contemplated her next moves back in Exeter. She had been captain of Princeton’s women’s ice hockey team and had played with the U.S. national team, but did not make the 2006 Olympic team roster. One summer day, her parents — both outdoor adventurers — offered a brief escape from the uncertainty — an escape that required another kind of athleticism.

“They were heading up to the White Mountains to enter this sprint triathlon called Race to the Face,” Jackson says. The race at Cannon Mountain — where New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain used to loom over Interstate 93 — involved a half-mile swim across Echo Lake, a 12.4-mile bike ride through Franconia Notch and a glute-busting 3.1-mile run up the steep, exposed skiing slopes. “It sounded cool and like a lot of fun, so I just went with them,” Jackson says. “I entered the race with my parents and tried it.”

Swimming in the lake, gasping with each vertical foot of climbing Cannon Mountain, Jackson was walloped yet hooked. “I went home and immediately dove into learning about how triathlons worked, and where the biggest races in the world took place,” she says.

This surge of curiosity is integral for those who pursue the sport. “You have to go for a long run, bike ride or swim before you reach the point where it really gets hard, and that’s the point the curiosity starts,” says ultra marathoner and author Doug Mayer ’83, speaking from Chamonix, France, where he manages his own ultra-running tour company Run The Alps. “The runner Courtney DeWalter describes this as going into her ‘pain cave’ and what we’re trying to do is make the cave bigger. For many of us, racing is all about what happens at that moment and how we cope with it.”

The thrill of being there… shoulder to shoulder with the top triathletes in the world, was electric.

First, Jackson tried her luck at a triathlon in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Then, while teaching English in Chiang Mai, Thailand, she completed the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, one of the oldest and most storied triathlons in Asia. She returned to the U.S. and placed second in her age group in her first long-distance triathlon, the 2007 Ironman Lake Placid in New York.

Soon after, Jackson moved to California to teach world history at The Harker School in San Jose. But just a few weeks after arriving, another door opened, unexpectedly. With her impressive finish in Lake Placid, she earned an invitation to compete in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.

The thrill of being there, under the broiling sun, shoulder to shoulder with the top triathletes in the world, was electric. Jackson persevered and won her 18-24 age group. It was the adventure of a lifetime. But until then, triathlons had been only adventures. When Jackson returned to San Jose, the idea of racing professionally started percolating on a long bike ride with a local triathlon training group.

“On that ride, I met the person who would become my husband,” she says. Sean “Wattie” Watkins, a professional cyclist, was struck by Jackson’s strength on the roads. When the conversation turned to triathlons, she recalls, “He was the one who said to me, ‘You should really give this a try.’ He saw something.”

Part II: The routine

The road from weekend warrior to professional triathlete runs through a series of finish lines and podiums — where stars are born, and sponsorship deals are earned. But every racer needs a routine to hone mind and body for maximum competitive output. Jackson rebuilt her life. She left her teaching job and established a foundation of daily, meticulously scheduled triathlon training and conditioning.

“My long game goal was always competing in Kona,” Jackson says. “And I worked backward from there, when thinking about my training.” Her rise-and-grind rituals, which carried her through 15 years of competing in triathlons, often began before dawn. “Almost every day, I would be at the pool from around 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.,” Jackson says. “Then I’d come back home, eat breakfast, and from there, I’d either get on the bike or start running; either of which could last anywhere from two hours to six hours.”

Whichever activity Jackson left for the final hours of daylight served as her “recovery” activity, after wolfing down a restorative late lunch. “There really aren’t off days,” she says. “There are lighter activity days, when I had a little more time to get back to sponsor emails or to run errands. But the training is all-consuming.”

Her tough regimen paid off in sponsorships as Jackson reached milestones like setting a speed record at the 2011 Wildflower Triathlon in California and winning the 2013 Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon — famous for its ice-cold swim across the San Francisco Bay. Her early deals came in the form of free gear: a race bike or a pair of running shoes. When she started to earn money, the checks were relatively modest and usually contingent on her performances.

“I would place fifth and receive a check for $1,500, and that would still feel like winning a million,” Jackson says of being paid to do something she loves. “During that time, Sean and I would drive all over the country for different races. We would be staying in friends’ houses or sleeping in our car. And it was so fun.”

Training for Heather Jackson ’02 includes hiking, swimming, biking and running. “there really aren’t off days,” she says.

Mayer describes going from one-off checks or free gear to sponsorship as a series of concentric circles. “You begin from a place of having fun,” Mayer says, “but you’re winning regularly enough to come on to the radar of a few sponsors and then, both parties — the racer and the sponsor — start to think, ‘What if…?’”

By the time Jackson had earned more lucrative deals with sponsors like Herbalife, which makes nutritional products, and Shimano, a Japanese cycling parts manufacturer, the job had expanded too. “When a sponsor is paying you $10,000 a year, plus bonuses for placing in races, you’re doing a lot more than just racing,” Jackson says. “You’re also doing photo shoots, going on podcasts, attending meet-and-greets, making appearances at 10K runs, and when you work with multiple sponsors, you’re flying all over the map for these things. It involves a ton of time management.”

But even as her global footprint expanded, the mountains of Kona loomed highest. The island kept calling. Having gotten a taste of reaching the podium at the Ironman World Championship, Jackson continued to pursue the grand prize. She made it through the punishing course five times and won the bronze medal in 2016. To augment the Ironman training, Jackson and Watkins split their time between the Cascades Range trails of Bend, Oregon (now their primary home), and the desert outside of Tucson, where the triple-digit temperatures mimicked the conditions of the infamous Energy Lab segment of Kona’s Ironman course.

The more time Jackson spent cycling and running in Arizona, the more the high-heat training offered something beyond strength and stamina- building. “The elevation down there is around 5,000 feet above sea level — you’re higher than you think you are,” Jackson says. “You look to the horizon and you can barely see anyone out there. It’s just you and the landscape.”

Part III: Redefining “Winning”

One of the tensions of being an athlete is the unanswered question, How long can I keep doing this? “What tends to happen is that their victories and their sponsorships are this series of cascading events until they hit a plateau in their mid-to-late 30s,” Mayer says. “And then they have to find something else to do.”

After finishing fifth among the female pros in the 2019 Ironman World Championship, Jackson decided that the 2020 edition of the race would be her final shot. “I had been trying to win this race for 10 years,” Jackson says. She had mostly avoided overuse injuries, but a stress fracture that sidelined her for eight weeks in 2015 was a glimpse of what she would probably face down the road.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic forced race organizers to cancel the 2020 Kona Ironman, and Jackson’s “retirement” was postponed indefinitely. She and Watkins started spending more time in the mountains and the desert, enjoying the quiet, immersive beauty of the outdoors.

“There was absolutely no racing,” Jackson says. “We were primarily living in our camper van, and I was riding my gravel bike a ton; running around on long trails through the woods and the desert with no one in sight.”

The solitude of Jackson’s new adventures awakened her desire to go further, higher and deeper. Even something as thrilling as the Ironman World Championship can become routine. As her life started to return to normal after a brutal year of social distancing, Jackson felt that something had shifted. “I was adjusting to these two new sports, trail running and gravel biking, and I was having so much fun doing it,” she says. “I had fallen in love again.”

By the time the Ironman World Championship race was rescheduled for October 2022, she had found a new path that felt like a natural segue from 15 years of professional triathlon racing. But how would it feel to learn the grueling mechanics of less familiar gravel biking and trail races that were hundreds of miles long? How would it feel to make this leap while approaching 40? And would Jackson’s sponsors follow her?

“When you’re in your 30s, you often get the sense that life is changing,” Jackson says. “I had no idea what I would ultimately be stepping into, if I walked away from what was familiar, but I also wanted to try new things while I still could. I was still fit and healthy. And life isn’t infinite.”

Jackson needed a new mountain to scale — a gateway like Cannon Mountain, where she learned to love the triathlon. And just a few weeks after wrapping up her last Ironman on Kona, she entered an ultramarathon in the parched mountains of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. At 100 miles, with almost 8,000 feet of elevation gain, the Javelina Jundred would test Jackson like nothing before.

“I had never run anything longer than a regular marathon,” Jackson says. She led for the first 26 miles and kept up her strong pace, doubling the distance and leading the runners at Mile 52. “And then, around Mile 80, I just imploded,” Jackson says.

But falling behind the other front-runners felt more like being awestruck. “I had just gone for it,” Jackson says. “The word ringing in my ears was, ‘Whoa.’ Being out there, trying this and diving in … that felt like a victory, even though I obviously didn’t win the race.”

Heather Jackson ’02 takes her dog Stevie for a spin

By vaulting into the unknown, she had a taste of what was still possible. “I had been thinking about this for such a long time,” Jackson says, “and coming out of the Javelina Jundred unscathed, I wondered, What was I waiting for?”

It’s a question many of us might ask ourselves when thinking about the curiosities that call out to us; the shots not taken. What are we waiting for?

Two years after Kona, mountain trails and gravel bike courses have become Jackson’s training grounds. Still a sponsored athlete, and still an adventurer, she has run and pedaled her way back onto podiums, through the hills of Sonoma County in California and historic stagecoach routes in the desert outside of Phoenix.

In August, she plans to head to Chamonix, France, for the 106-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) race, where runners set off at 6 p.m., chugging into the darkness with only their headlamps (and a lot of extra batteries). It’s a race that Mayer once considered “crazy” and completely out of his wheelhouse, before running it for the first time in 2017. “As you get older and more experienced, you start casting about for new ways to grow,” Doug says. “It’s a progression of many small steps.”

For Jackson, who’s now doing most of her running practice at night, the UTMB is uncharted territory — literally running into the dark, which she describes as “a scary challenge.” And yet, it’s hardly her first leap into the great wide unknown.

“I know that there will be a time when I can’t compete at the highest level as a professional athlete,” Jackson says. “But, I’m not sure if there’s ever really a good time to say, ‘I’m done.’ Because you need to believe there’s more in there. And out there.”

Miles Howard is a writer and author based in Boston. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and National Geographic.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Conversation starters

Roland Merullo ’71 and his daughter Zanny Merullo Steffgen ’16 bridge gender and generations in online newsletter

Just weeks shy of his 71st birthday, author Roland Merullo ’71 sits at his computer keyboard in Conway, Massachusetts, pondering an eighth decade on Earth. “There is more free time,” he types, “and there is the comfort of financial security.”

But there is also angst.

“Many days I wake up now and there’s nothing I really have to do, which can be nice … but feeling like I’m making zero contribution to the world sometimes brings on a nagging uneasiness,” Merullo writes.

Nearly 1,900 miles away in Fort Collins, Colorado, Merullo’s daughter, 26-year-old travel writer Zanny Merullo Steffgen ’16, sits at her computer, reading her dad’s words in real time on a Google Doc that they share.

“What is it like to be your age?” he asks her.

“The best part of being 26 is feeling like I have all the benefits of youth and all of the benefits of adulthood,” Steffgen types. “I’m in good physical shape and still look young enough to be ID’d at a bar.”

But, she adds, “it feels like a turning point in a lot of ways. I’m looking ahead to ‘next steps,’ like buying a home and having a family, and trying to figure out how to get there while also feeling overwhelmed with the realization that this relatively free phase of my life might be over.”

That conversation, later titled “Two Perspectives: What it’s like being 26 and 70 in 2024,” became the 24th edition of Hi Zan, Hi Pa, a newsletter Merullo and Steffgen have been co-writing since 2023. Billed as a “father-daughter conversation” that considers life, from the ordinary to the philosophical, the twice-monthly newsletters are posted to Substack, an online platform that lets writers publish directly to subscribers.

Hi Zan, Hi Pa is among hundreds of thousands of Substack publications whose writers have found an audience. For its 450 subscribers, Hi Zan, Hi Pa is a meditation, a treatise on what it is to be human and, most of all, the chronicle of a friendship.

Conversations between Zanny Merullo Steffgen ’16 and her father, Roland Merullo ’71, start with a question and go from there

A Newsletter Is Born

The newsletter was Merullo’s idea, so far as either of them can remember. It mostly came about organically, born of discontent of the soulless social media climate. “Mean-spirited, intolerant and superficial,” is the way Merullo describes it.

“We thought that we could put something into the atmosphere that’s more wholesome, thoughtful and provocative, but also respectful,” he says. “I remember a long conversation we had outside the library in Fort Collins, talking about how we might do it, how we might organize, and what we should call it.”

Steffgen describes Hi Zan, Hi Pa as a public extension of the “contemplative” conversations and emails that she and her dad have exchanged for decades. At 7 years old, Steffgen was asking Merullo to divine the meaning of life and death. “Neither of us is fond of superficial exchanges,” Merullo says.

Newsletter conversations typically flow to a weighty 2,000 words, expositions that allow them to take deep dives into what it means to be alive. Topics are limited only by their imagination. They can be whimsical but have taken plenty of sojourns into the existential: Are you happy? What does love mean to you? What is your relationship with God and spirituality?

The exchanges start slowly. Comfortably. They are a “natural conversation,” characterized by a “warming up,” Steffgen says. “And then the deeper we go, we start to tease out the different facets. By the end, the conversation is often totally different from how it started, which is fun to see. We don’t plan what we’re going to say, and we don’t have any outline. We start with a question and go from there.”

One newsletter topic was disagreement, something that doesn’t happen frequently in their relationship. They have always shown mutual respect. Commenting on their newsletter, one baffled reader asked why father and daughter are so civil.

“We tried really hard to disagree, and it was kind of funny,” Merullo says. “You can probe the depths of an important issue without disagreeing, and certainly without being disrespectful and mean-spirited.”

“The biggest differences between us are our perspectives on gender and generation,” Steffgen says. Merullo became a first-time father at 44, so their age gap is sizable.

Merullo has opinions on climate change and gender topics, but Steffgen’s counterpoint has proven enlightening. “I really try hard to be open to Zan’s points of view,” he says. “The interesting thing to me is that as well as I know Zan, these conversations enable me to see facets of her thinking that even I don’t know after all these years, and I love that.”

The Merullo household was never about rigid rules. It was, instead, a place for conversations about “how to be” in a world crying for kindness. In fact, the newsletter is a template of sorts for social decorum. Merullo says, “By nature, Zan and I think about how people behave, how we behave, how the world works, and how we wish it worked.

Growing Up Together

The newsletter and the written word were natural ways for Merullo and Steffgen to communicate. He is the author of 21 novels, including Breakfast with Buddha and A Harvest of Secrets. From Exeter, he went on to earn two degrees in Russian language and literature from Brown University, in addition to working as a cabdriver and a carpenter. He has also worked for the United States Information Agency and taught at institutions that include Amherst and Bennington colleges.

Steffgen took a less traditional route to finding her voice. In lieu of college, she moved to Cambodia at 20 and started a writing career that highlighted her experiences living abroad. She has since written for publications including Fodor’s, Scuba Diving and Adventure.com.

Merullo grew up in a lower-middle- class household outside Boston, the grandson of English and Italian immigrants. He enrolled at Exeter on a scholarship, after a woman told his mother, “You have to get him into a better school system.”

“My mother told me that when I was in my 50s,” Merullo says. Exeter was a place where it wasn’t “weird” to care about academics. The attitude was refreshing, and he was thrilled to participate in roundtable classroom conversations in which teachers encouraged discussion, disagreement and the investigation of meaty questions.

Steffgen enrolled at Exeter in her junior year, after spending two years at home because of a chronic illness. “At that point, I was just grateful to be able to go to school at all,” she says. “And I was really excited for the experience because it always sounded like my dad had a lot of independence, and I thrive on independence. I had a wonderful Exeter experience.”

She says Exeter’s Harkness approach, and its focus on courage, compassion and empathy, is integral to the person she is today. They’re characteristics that can be found in Hi Zan, Hi Pa.

The interesting thing to me is that as well as I know Zan, these conversations enable me to see facets of her thinking that even I don't know after all these years, and I love that.

A Broader Purpose

While the national discourse is fractured along political and cultural fault lines, the newsletter offers a kinder and gentler alternative.

“Hi Zan, Hi Pa impressively aspires to restore dialogue in the age of monologue, the experience of speaking with someone rather than past someone, an experience with which we’ve dangerously lost touch as a culture and a society,” says Robert Braile, a longtime friend of the Merullo family and former environmental correspondent and book critic for The Boston Globe. Braile is the husband of Exeter Mathematics Instructor Dale Braile and father of Assistant Director of Admissions Alex Braile.

“Conversation is the heart and soul of a society,” Merullo says. “If you can’t have open, forthright, respectful conversations, the society falls apart, I think. I don’t know that we’re modeling that for the entire nation, but we’re putting our little piece out there and saying, look, this is how you can talk to somebody. And I’m proud of that and it matters to me that we do that.”

Braile adds, “That the exchange between Roland and Zanny crosses genders and generations makes it even more integral to resurrecting thoughtful and civil discourse in our country: a common language to sustain our common humanity.”

The newsletters resonate in still other ways.

“I love that their columns are about everyday situations I’m experiencing and thinking about,” says longtime English Instructor Lundy Smith, who was an adviser to Steffgen and her sister, Juliana ’19, when both lived in Langdell Hall. “Roland and Zanny are kind of the ‘Seinfeld’ of the Substack world. One of the things I love about all of the Merullos is that they welcome debate and don’t shy away from controversy. Zanny and Roland model the skills we all need to navigate our divisive society.”

A few graphics from the Hi Zan, Hi Pa newsletter

While they have avoided being overtly political, Merullo acknowledges that the political headwinds are getting harder to ignore. “In a politically divided nation, conversation is curative,” he says. Perhaps not so much more than in communicating with his daughter Zanny.

“We’re exposing our relationship to people that we don’t know,” Merullo says. “We get very personal. We’re not afraid to show who we are. We’re not afraid to talk about difficulties we’ve had in the past especially, but even now. And I think that too sets it a little bit apart from some of the stuff online.”

Readers can expect the unexpected. Some recent newsletter topics include their relationship with money. A July installment highlighted father’s and daughter’s struggles with directions. “We get lost really easily,” Steffgen says. “It’s something we’re able to joke about.”

Steffgen, who posts “discussion questions” at the end of each newsletter, is calculated in her outreach. “Being vulnerable gives our readers permission to be vulnerable too,” she says. “We’ve had some really good discussions with our readers that way.”

Merullo and Steffgen are on to something. In a world of limited attention spans and limitless entertainment options, 90% of Hi Zan, Hi Pa subscribers renewed their annual memberships. The secret to success, Merullo and Steffgen say, stems from mutual respect, as evidenced by an early pact.

“I said to Zan, ‘If you get to be 18 and you never say, “Dad, you ruined my life,” I’ll give you a hundred bucks,’” Merullo says. “When she got to be 18, she said, ‘You owe me a hundred bucks.’ And I paid up.”

Andrew Faught is a freelance writer in Fresno, California. He has written widely on the issues and ideas of education.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.

Fish bone broth

Finis Origine Pendet

With each smack of the knife against the cutting board, the odor of raw fish grows stronger. My mother tosses precisely cut chunks of northern red snapper into the pot of boiling water, then adds a bulb of spring onion, minced ginger, diced tofu and a sprinkle of goji berries — steps she’s performed countless times to make her famous fish-bone broth.

I first tried her broth at the age of 5, when Mom walked into the playroom carrying a blue porcelain bowl, picked out a small piece of fish with her chopsticks, and fed it to me. As I chewed, something jabbed the roof of my mouth: a fish bone my mom had overlooked. I panicked and swallowed the bone, feeling it lodge in my throat. Afraid to say anything, I dutifully opened my mouth for more, but from that moment on, my relationship with the soup was fraught.

As I grew older, I could no longer conceal my disgust for the broth, full of tofu with fish scales stuck to it and soggy goji berries. Whenever the familiar odor permeated the house, I’d scowl, throw a tantrum, and threaten to starve. My mom insisted fish broth is the brain’s golden food, nutritious and healthy, but her comments did nothing to lessen my loathing.

One day, as I feigned vomiting at the bowl in front of me, my mom told me about her childhood in a village in southern China. At 9 years old she attended an elementary school in the city, staying at a friend’s house during the week and riding her bike home on weekends. Before she left for school on Monday mornings, her mother would prepare a bento box with a few pieces of meat and vegetables. The meager portion was supposed to last until Friday. When the contents of her bento box ran out, my mother’s diet consisted of rice doused in soy sauce, the only food her host family offered. Pride prevented her from asking for more.

As I stared at the broth, now forming a film of oil, a wave of guilt washed over me. How could I have been so insensitive? Fish-bone broth was an emblem of the life my mom had struggled to attain, one in which she could provide her children with the abundance she’d never had.

Reaching across the table, my mom skimmed the film away, revealing the creamy white soup she’d spent years perfecting. I picked up my spoon and began to eat.

Amy Lin ’25 wrote this narrative story for an English course with Instructor Ellee Dean ’01. It was published in The Sun magazine Readers Write section in May 2024.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Brain training

New Exeter Innovation course teaches mental skills critical for peak performance

Did you ever hear a coach say, “Get your head in the game”? The idea was that by simply focusing your brain, you would play better.

Students in this fall’s new Exeter Innovation course EXI540: Performance and the Brain studied links just like that, connections between the brain’s cognitive functions and an individual’s ability to perform well in various tasks, whether physical, mental or cognitive. Conceived and taught by Instructor in Physical Education Don Mills, the course paired readings at the Harkness table with meaningful activities to focus on real time application of skills and strategies used to build strong systems of success for everyday life at Exeter and beyond.

“Initially students assumed this would be a sports psychology class,” Mills says, “but it really went down a path that impacted their daily personal development. It was interesting to hear how students wanted to work on themselves, put a plan into effect, and learn the science behind training your brain to make the plan work.”

Charles Dobbins ’25 says: “The class was a really eye-opening way to learn about yourself. It was so interesting to learn about how the chemistry in your brain influences the decisions that we make and how it affects long-term health, happiness and demeanor.”

One assignment tasked students with developing a personal performance-enhancement plan. They identified the formation of a habit — how it is constructed, maintained and broken — and experimented and implemented practical techniques to design personal systems of growth. In an era when distractions like smartphones and social media are consistently competing for more attention, this led several students to pursue a path to decreased screen time, less procrastination and more production.

The class was a really eye-opening way to learn about yourself.

Charles Dobbins ’25

“I was using strategies we read about and discussed in class in an attempt to not be on my phone as much,” Dobbins says. “I was trying to make the habit of grabbing my phone be unattractive and used some apps that take away the instant gratification of social media. I was able to decrease my weekly average screen time by two hours.”

For Kai Dunham ’25, “This class allowed me to take care of myself while learning how to be successful. … It was easy to participate around the table because the content applies to everyone — everyone has good habits, bad habits, and things they can better understand about themselves.”

Mills concluded: “This class featured students that hold various passions and I hope they were all able to leave this class with tools to build success.”

This article was first published in the winter 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Nurturing our future

A conversation with children’s book author Gwendolyn Wallace ’17

Gwendolyn Wallace gives children’s literature a new perspective. By centering Black history and Afrodiasporic voices, she says, she hopes to inspire youngsters to “step into their transformative power.”

Wallace draws from her upbringing in Connecticut, visits with grandparents in South Carolina and academic pursuits to seed her plots. She holds a master’s degree in public history from University College London and is in the first year of a History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) Ph.D. program at MIT.

Her book The Light She Feels Inside, published in 2023, offers canny lessons in the history of resistance, name-checking sheroes such as Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nina Simone and the Combahee River Collective. In Joy Takes Root, also published in 2023, Wallace portrays a Black grandmother and granddaughter bonding over their mutual love of gardening. Dancing with Water, due out this year, is about the tradition of water divining and opens the door, she says, to conversation about “environmental racism, water protection and water rights.” We caught up with Wallace to hear more about her writing.

You place great importance on representation in stories. Does that drive your books?

I think a lot about what it means for children and adults to see themselves in stories, and it’s not helpful when that conversation begins and ends with visual representation. As a Black woman writing about the experiences of Black children and Black people, my goal is to speak to a distinctly Black mode of living and way of thinking that draws from my experiences. That goes beyond just seeing someone who looks like you: it’s also important that I’m giving children tools in my books, that I’m passing on lessons that I wish had been explained to me when I was 6. I approach writing for children and interacting with them with the understanding that we, as adults, have just as much to learn from them as we have to teach them. I want to hear their vision of the world and let them know that they have a safe place to share that, to combat the messaging telling them that they’re too small or too quiet or too little to have anything important to say.

Dancing with Water, Joy Takes Root and The Light She Feels Inside by Gwendolyn Wallace ’17.

Your first two books feature libraries and gardens. What do those places mean to you?

I wrote Joy Takes Root and The Light She Feels Inside in 2020, and both touch on questions I was wrestling with at the time. I wrote The Light She Feels Inside first, when demonstrations for racial justice were getting quite a bit of media attention, and a lot of people were engaged. I was struck by how artists and writers I was following then were thinking not just about things that we need to get rid of, but also about the excitement and joy and imagination that’s required to build a world after those changes.

I wanted to give that feeling to children, to help them understand that there’s this long lineage of hopeful, powerful and resistant people whom they came from, who dealt with the same feelings, and who found something to do about it; I wanted to say, “None of those things are too far out of your reach.” As a kid, libraries were a safe space — I felt freedom to read and explore — so I wanted to share my love for libraries as imaginative, as generative, as nurturing spaces.

And Joy Takes Root?

That came from the same time frame. I had COVID; I was very sick for many months, back in my childhood bedroom, relying on my parents in a way that I hadn’t since I left for Exeter. I was struggling with exhaustion, fatigue and brain fog, feeling distant from my body. One important thing that helped me get back to that feeling of embodiment was gardening. I spent a lot of time with my hands and feet in the dirt, thinking about my ancestors, thinking about my body, thinking about the connections I feel to plants and animals. My paternal grandmother was an avid gardener; she taught me so much about plants, and how to think about myself in the world. Joy Takes Root is about my paternal grandmother; Ms. Scott, the librarian in The Light She Feels Inside, is named after my maternal grandmother.

Is there a shared thread running through your fiction and academic work?

There’s a topical thread of wanting to connect with the people I came from, wanting to understand Black history, to highlight histories of Black resistance. There’s also this methodological thread: play. When I was a child, I loved to play and make things and try every art form under the sun. As I got older, I lost some of that curiosity, some of that willingness to play. Writing for children, then turning back to my adult writing, helps me keep that playful spirit, that spirit of experimenting and pursuing paths that might not make it into the final draft.

My goal is to speak to a distinctly Black mode of living and way of thinking that draws from my experiences.

Your Ph.D. encompasses history, anthropology, science, technology and society. Have those areas always been of interest?

I’ve always felt uncomfortable placing myself in one discipline. When I went to Yale and found the Program in the History of Science and Medicine, something clicked, and I thought, “Oh, this is where I want to be, working at all these different scales and time periods, where I get to use lots of different methods and lots of different parts of my brain.”

Was Exeter influential in shaping your worldview?

Exeter introduced me to so many different topics and thinkers that I would not have otherwise discovered at that time. My favorite courses at Exeter were Courtney Marshall’s Toni Morrison and Sydnee Goddard’s Animal Behavior. In Animal Behavior, we were studying mice and mazes, and to have that kind of opportunity before college was amazing. To read and think about a good chunk of Toni Morrison’s work for a semester is something a lot of people don’t get ever in their lives, certainly not until college. Having the chance to think deeply, to walk into every class thinking, “I might not have understood everything that happened in the reading or the homework last night, but I do have something valuable to say about it” — that definitely shaped how I see the world and how I move in it.

Tell me about the new book you are working on that’s due out this year.

Dancing with Water is about the tradition of water divining, that there are people who can sense water underground and dig wells for their community. I set it in the Black South to open a conversation with children about things like environmental racism, water protection and water rights. The main character, Kit, is nonbinary, and learning this tradition from their grandfather. It’s also a story about gender fluidity and what it means to feel safe in your body, learning something that is being passed down to you, something that is yours.

And you have another title, about pioneering Black science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, coming out in 2026.

Yes. Imagine New Suns will be the first picture-book biography of Octavia Butler, which I am honored to have had the opportunity to write — and sad that it took this long for her to have a picture-book biography. I didn’t learn about Butler until I was in college. If I had learned about her earlier, about her use of experimentation and play, she would have been another person that I could have seen myself in.

— Daneet Steffens ’82 is a books-focused journalist. She has contributed to the Bulletin since 2013.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Remembering the Ioka Theatre

Clipped from the scrapbook of Percy C. Rogers

The Ioka Theatre, a stalwart of Water Street in downtown Exeter, first opened its doors to the community in 1915. Visitors at the time paid just a quarter to take in an afternoon screening of a silent picture accompanied by a 10-piece orchestra and a pipe organ for sound effects.

Over the decades, the Ioka and the Academy grew together. Students often helped pick the movies the theater would show, Exeter Theater Department productions graced its stage and in 2005, Principal Ty Tingley announced Principal’s Day on its marquee. For students, it was a welcome social diversion from their studies.

Local residents lined up at the Ioka for the premiere of a 1941 newsreel that featured the town of Exeter. This image is part of a scrapbook in the Academy Archives made by Percy C. Rogers, who taught French and Spanish at Exeter for 43 years. For much of that time, he served as coach of the varsity tennis and hockey teams. He was president of the Exeter Historical Society for 16 years.

“I remember the excitement and shock of Pulp Fiction, which we all raced to see,” Laura Menge ’95 says. “I remember watching Reality Bites with Bancroft friends and couldn’t wait for my 20s when I could live as cool as Winona Ryder. And I remember seeing The English Patient there on a date.”

Alas, the Ioka showed its last film in 2008. Then the building lay dormant until 2020 when Ioka Properties purchased the property and began redeveloping it into a mixed-use space. The plans include a restaurant in the basement, retail space on the first floor and condominiums on the upper floors. Construction is due for completion this year.

For those who miss the 19.6-footwide triangular marquee, it found a new home in Cincinnati at the American Sign Museum (pictured below), where it was installed in July.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Song of thyself

Lauren Josef, chair of the Theater and Dance Department, on growing up, The Wizard of Oz and motherhood

Each fall, faculty members take to the podium in Phillips Church, in front of peers, students and friends, to deliver meditations. There is no template or paradigm for a meditation. Most are personal and evolve from thinking about life and one’s place in it.

One of the earliest published collections of meditations states: “The meditations may well signify the best of what Phillips Exeter Academy seeks to nurture within its community: clear cogent expression, observation and contemplation, respect for others, and a sense of the complex interrelatedness of humankind.”

Here is an excerpt of the meditation Lauren Josef shared with the community this fall.

I always looked forward to a tradition my dad started where he’d sing to me on my birthday eve. When I was turning 5, he sang, “Daddy’s little girl is growing up in the world, and you’ll never be 5 again.” Five was the time for a Barney-themed birthday party, forcing my next tooth to be loose during class, the Girl Scout Law, and heating up steak and potatoes for breakfast. Five was the time for playing house in my friend Kristina’s basement and always playing the role of mom. Sometimes I would cave and dive headfirst into embodying the sister, but I was usually the mom. Coming home from work, rocking the baby, making spaghetti and playing a really great mom. Five was when I started to understand death, and I had a hard time falling asleep because I was thinking about the idea of my parents dying — falling deep into a void, disappearing forever. I’d get out of bed, walk downstairs, my parents were usually watching TV. “I’m scared,” I’d say. Mom would always walk me back up.

“Daddy’s little girl is growing up in the world, and you’ll never be 12 again.” Twelve was the age my skirts were too short and I started wearing makeup. Twelve was when I wanted an older sister more than anything, so she could tell my mom I wanted a bra, so I didn’t have to. Our sixth grade talent show was fast approaching, and “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers was it. Amanda Pollack and I had rehearsed for weeks on her bedroom floor. If I was nervous, I don’t remember. I recall feeling brave and proud, lights bright on my face, and Eric Irwin, the class bully, telling me I had a nice voice afterwards.

“Daddy’s little girl is growing up in the world, and you’ll never be 16 again.” Sixteen was all about driving. I went straight to the DMV the day I turned 16. Buying my own CDs and learning every word, belting with the windows down. Sixteen was All-State Show Choir and driving to school with my friend Kyle. Cracking up in the car for an hour together every morning, just to get the good parking spot. It was making up characters and voices with my theater friends and going to parties for the first time. Making my own money on roller skates as a carhop at Sonic. Sixteen was when I got into an argument with my parents about grades — I only had so much time in the day, and I was totally fine getting Bs if it meant I had time to memorize lines.

Over the holidays we always went to my grandparents’ house, and that year my family wanted me to sing for them. I was nervous. I quickly realized how vastly different it felt to be singing on stage under blindingly bright lights to being in your dimly lit grandparents’ house (or a church), with the people you love the most staring at you with bated breath and eyes of encouragement. I’d been putting on shows and directing my cousins in my own made-up plays for years! I forced Monica to wear the pink leotard because the black one looked better on me as we sashayed across the living room floor. I improvised a plot, came up with the blocking. At the end I’d be beaming, arm in arm with Monica, Wyatt and Dillon as our parents clapped and full-blown hand-whistled at us. This moment in my grandparents’ living room felt very different. I was so nervous, I almost didn’t do it. Mom said, “You can do this, Lar.”

I feel her in me, as a mom. … I dive into the uncomfortable because she taught me that I'm strong and I'll be OK.

The song was an aria called “Tu Lo Sai,” a classic. A piece from one of those anthologies that everyone sings their first Italian aria from. After some bargaining and pleading with my family, we finally reached a compromise. I would sing, but only if I faced the wall. And that’s exactly what I did. I sang the entire aria to the wall. When I turned around, my Aunt Leslie, my Grandma Audrey, and my mom were all sobbing. Leslie’s never held back; she’s always been one to really blow her nose and let out little puffs of sing-songy sounds while she’s lamenting. Mom was teary-eyed, face damp, and Grandma was tastefully dabbing at her eyes with her crumpled tissue. I took it all in, rebooted, and had the guts to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” looking right at my mom.

I’ve been watching The Wizard of Oz since I can remember. Our first house in Roanoke, I would run all the way to the back of the house when the Wicked Witch came on. My mom was folding laundry and assured me she’d fast-forward through that part. The movie, the story, has followed me. My mom actually saved her original L. Frank Baum books from when she was little. She somehow knew she wanted to give them to her future children, and I loved them just as much as she did! I sang “Over the Rainbow” at my senior recital, I sang it for an impromptu jam in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and a few years later I tried to sing it to Mom when she was in hospice.

“Daddy’s little girl is growing up in the world, and she’ll never be 31 again.” Oof, 31 was a time of becoming an adult, supposedly. Of watching my family hurt more than I could ever imagine, of keeping busy and settling into my new full-time job here at PEA. It was a time of calling Dad every day, unable to read between the lines. Thirty-one is when I directed “The Wizard of Oz” here at Phillips Exeter, and it opened not even a year after Mom died. I poured every ounce of myself into that show, serving as director and costume designer — everyone had at least four costumes.

A scene from Exeter’s 2019 performance of *The Wizard of Oz.*

A technicolor story of whimsical dreams, of following your heart and a reminder that even when all the clouds darken up the skyway, there’s a rainbow highway to be found. I told the cast on Day 1 that my mom had died in April and how meaningful that story was to me. I couldn’t hold it in, I had to say it, my mom taught me to put it all out there. To say what you feel in your heart. Just a couple weeks after the show closed, we were on spring break, and I found out that I was pregnant with Lily.

“Daddy’s little girl is growing up in the world, and she’ll never be 37 again.” Mom was silly and fun — there were times I almost peed my pants from laughing so hard with her. She fought fiercely for what she believed in and commanded a room in her little 5-foot-1½-inch frame. (The half really counts; she taught me that.) She loved so deeply, and cried tears of joy all the time. “It’s not because I’m sad,” she’d say. “I’m just so happy!” She felt every feeling and never apologized for it. She talked it through, because there was no way she was stuffing anything down. Mom was up on that dance floor, owning it. She was preaching YOLO before it was even a thing. You only live once.

I feel her in me, as a mom. I am inspired to be brave, like she always was. I dive into the uncomfortable because she taught me that I’m strong and I’ll be OK. I can sing in front of people as they’re looking at me, I can dance whenever I want. I am her as a mom. I do get it. I am me, and I am my mom. Just as Lily is Lily, but she is also me.

Lauren Josef joined the Academy in 2018. She is the chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, Costume Designer and Director of Costumes.

This article was first published in the winter 2025 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Emma Ward

Artificial

Intelligence

How technology is shaping everything we do

What is AI?

AI and finance

AI and national security

A student perspective on AI

AI and healthcare

AI and the future

A brief history of artificial intelligence

History

in Focus

Examining the Academy’s connections to slavery and its path forward

A Home for Early Black Exonians

Roscoe Conkling Bruce, class of 1898

John Tazewell Jones, class of 1900

Ernest Marshall, class of 1904

Benjamin Seldon, class of 1907

Rawson announces plan to retire in 2026

Going the distance

From the Ironman World Championship to the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, Heather Jackson '02 on winning, losing and growing as a professional athlete

Part I: A triathlete is born

Part II: The routine

Part III: Redefining “Winning”

Conversation starters

Roland Merullo ’71 and his daughter Zanny Merullo Steffgen ’16 bridge gender and generations in online newsletter

A Newsletter Is Born

Growing Up Together

A Broader Purpose

Fish bone broth

Finis Origine Pendet

Brain training

New Exeter Innovation course teaches mental skills critical for peak performance

Nurturing our future

A conversation with children’s book author Gwendolyn Wallace ’17

Remembering the Ioka Theatre

Clipped from the scrapbook of Percy C. Rogers

Song of thyself

Lauren Josef, chair of the Theater and Dance Department, on growing up, The Wizard of Oz and motherhood