Living Large the Dream

Dream big, we urge our kids.

And when they do, and then achieve beyond even their own hopes, we celebrate.

From a long list of Toads who chased dreams this past summer and caught them, a few, starting and ending with climb-every-mountain types:

As part of a fund-raising effort to support families challenged by cancer, Olivia Simonson, a new sophomore, and her father, Clif, organized and trained for Climb for the Cause, culminating in an ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak. July 17 was summit day for the two and their group. They’ve nearly reached their goal of gathering donations totaling $100,000 for the Andrea Grace Soter-Simonson Foundation, honoring Olivia’s mother, who died of ovarian cancer three years ago.

Lucy Jiyoon Han ’12, changed by the experience of attending a high school that required her adding “stall-mucking” to her skills repertoire, joined forces with her good friend Hwi Young Lee to research and write about seven farming communities, both rural and urban—two in Korea and five in the U.S. The result, in both Korean and English: Community, Food, Responsibility.

 

Gaining entry into Varsity Boys' Basketball coach Jason Carney’s Club Hu Dan (formerly the 10,000-Shot Club, renamed for Dan Hu CdeP 2011, who managed to shoot 45K free-throws over the course of three summers): Julian Garcia-Kasimirowski '12, Jack Weil ’13, Ciara Byrne ’14, and Jeff Rhee ’14.

Is it possible, wondered Josh Cho ’13, to determine how successfully we have lived on a given day? To answer his own question, Josh developed something called the Personal Scorecard—the PSC—which tracks various aspects of a participant’s daily life (academics and exercise, for example; family and social time, activities such as community service, even “hanging out”) to raise personal awareness and motivate for the good.

Senior Lucas Currie ferreted out an opportunity combining service and a second summer of language immersion when, solo, he tracked down a Thacher alumna who runs a hotel in Ecuador—Maggie Reniers CdeP 1992. (Maggie had for many years been an English teacher to migrant labor workers in various parts of California.) She got him in touch with folks managing a village orphanage near Otavalo, who welcomed Lucas’s hands and heart. For three weeks, he worked in day care, playing with the younger children in the morning and teaching English to older ones in the afternoon—via songs, games, stories. To all of them, he introduced the concept of dental hygiene. And when, in his final days, two of the adult workers were absent, he ran the whole show.

Pursuing passion and deepening proclivity over the long haul of several weeks were senior Jackson Howard, junior Nan Macmillan and sophomore Hannah Everett. All three gained admission to elite programs at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp in Michigan, Jackson in writing, Nan in singing/songwriting, and Hannah in dance. Anton Doty ‘12 was accepted into and completed a 6-week program at Boston’s renowned Berklee School of Music.

 

Helen Brown ‘12 spent the summer working with Charlie, a collie-shepherd rescue dog, to prepare him for certification as a therapy dog through the organization Therapy Dogs International. Obedience tests, requisite volunteer hours, a written test for the handler—Helen and her mother (who is director at an assisted living facility) put Charlie and themselves through the proper paces so that others may now benefit. (Not surprisingly, the focus of Helen’s Senior Exhibition is therapy animals and their influence on healing.) When she wasn’t doing that or working, she shadowed a large-animal vet. “I witnessed so many wonderful triumphs,” Helen says, “ranging from a fully recovered foundering horse to a foal with crooked legs who had corrective surgery and now is perfect and bouncing up and down!” Helen’s classmate, Cayce Cover, also worked through the entire summer alongside a veterinarian—this one in Oklahoma—who specializes in equine reproduction. Over the course of the summer, Casey broadened her vocabulary—umbilical hernia, endoscopy--and, like Helen, emerged at the end of August 110% affirmed in her intention to keep working with animals at the center of her adult life.

Senior Hailey Everett also put in many hours alongside a veterinarian—Kit Miller DVM CdeP 1980, an equine vet practicing in both New York and Florida—but her longer-term summer work got her back to the land, and on it and in it: she worked sun-up to after sundown, seven days a week, on her family farm in Soquel, California, northeast of Santa Cruz. She spent her hours in the fields harvesting a variety of fruits and veggies that would then be prepared for weekend farmers’ markets or the Everetts’ farm stand—of which Hailey was expressly in charge, from heirloom tomatoes to pasture-raised eggs to red raspberries and apple cider. It’s easy to get her going on the seemingly infinite varieties of summer squash, the benefits of hard-to-find organic iceberg lettuce, or the nuances of egg-gathering. “The day was never over, it seemed, as I tended to my personal garden and eventually closed the farm stand in the dark--only to rise at 6 AM again to repeat the cycle.” Oh, and did we mention that Hailey also wrote the farm’s e-newsletter and kept their Facebook page current? (Or, under the circumstances, would that be currant?)

Shane Griffee, also a senior, inspired by his AP Environmental Science class last year (see "Attached Media") and operating on the “Think global, act local” imperative, applied for and secured an internship at BioResource Consultants, an environmental consulting firm that provides research and consulting services for the purpose of discovering the best conservation and management practices regarding sensitive natural resources. “One of the neatest projects I worked on this summer was the Southwestern Pond Turtle Relocation Project. I got to go to the Santa Paula River with some biologists to track the movement of Southwestern Pond Turtles there. It was an amazing experience: after hours trudging in the sandy river, we saw the antenna of the tracking device finally fix upon the turtles’ shells as they rose above the algae in which they were hiding.”

Meanwhile, Charlie Evans and Chase Montague, both ’12, earned their Wilderness First Responder certifications.

We said we’d end in the mountains, and here we are, this time Stateside in the Sierra Nevada Range.

Seniors Joe Bell, Will Kirkland, and Marshall Gifford knew even before last year was half over that they wanted to do some serious backcountry hiking the summer before their final year at Thacher—all three are stalwarts of the Outdoor Program—so they put together a plan to hike the John Muir Trail. With planning help from Golden Trout Manager and Education Director Cam Spaulding CdeP 1992 and Director of the Outdoor Program Brian Pidduck (also CdeP 1992), the three shouldered packs initially weighing 70 pounds and set out from Yosemite, ultimately climbing Mt. Whitney and returning to Golden Trout. Along their 211-mile way, more of it in snow than they’d anticipated—one low point the first day, when food poisoning ravaged the trio. “It was scary,” Joe admits. “I started out feeling completely invincible—we all did--and then, in a few hours, was the sickest I’ve ever been. It was a reality check, for sure.” As for high points, the boys list several: views from Thousand Island Lake and in Evolution Valley, a dawn ascent of the highest mountain in the Lower 48, a “sweet detour” to Iva Belle Hot Springs on Fish Creek which included an “epic quest--futile, but fun--for what’s known as “The King’s Tub,” the pure pleasure of “just walking, ”the challenge of map-reading,” the daily discipline of keeping a journal along the way.

“On Day 9,” Joe says, “I woke up an hour before Will and Marshall and felt really powerfully a kind of transcendence, a timelessness. I think I’ll have that feeling my whole life—a sense of how amazing to be young and healthy and strong.”

And, we hope, how always to dream big.