The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Notable East Haddam Hale-Ray High grads, then and now
What do a New York Times bureau chief, a nationally known doctor and a publisher of Time magazine have in common? If your guess is that they are all Ivy league graduates, you are getting warmer. Think back a few more years. They are all Nathan Hale-Ray High School graduates who grew up with the same small-town values as our students today. They all prove one thing Hale-Ray grads have always known — just because you are from a small town doesn’t mean that you think small. In fact, we dream bigger here. Like the “Little Engine that Could,” we think we can until we know we can!
New York Times Bureau Chief Richard Bernstein grew up on a poultry farm in East Haddam. After graduating from Hale-Ray, Bernstein went to UConn and earned a bachelor of arts degree in history, followed by a master of arts in history and East Asian languages from Harvard. He moved to Taiwan to study Chinese. In 1973, Bernstein joined Time magazine, writing about Asia. A few years later in 1979, he opened Time’s first bureau in China and was the first Beijing bureau chief. From Beijing, Bernstein went on to The New York Times and served as the United Nations bureau chief, Paris bureau chief, national cultural correspondent, book critic and Berlin bureau chief. Not bad for having humble roots on a poultry farm.
Dr. Donald Berwick grew up the son of our town’s family physician, Dr. Phillip Berwick. Dr Berwick writes about his father on the website The Conversation Project:
“For 42 years, my father provided care as a general practitioner to a population of farmers, laborers and their families in the tiny Connecticut town in which I grew up. He is the guy who got up in the middle of the night to drive out to a farm because Jimmy had a high fever. I would become half awake at the sound of his car starting in the driveway but I would not know why until the next morning when I heard about Jimmy’s fever or a neighbor’s heart attack or the awful car accident at the drawbridge.”
No doubt Dr. Berwick learned a lot about smalltown values from his father. Donald Berwick went to Harvard, became a pediatrician, served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staff of Boston’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Berwick believed in quality health care and founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
In 2005, he was appointed Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of his work with the British National Health Service. More recently, Dr. Berwick ran for governor of Massachusetts. Helping people improve their lives was a theme that played over and over in the Berwick family.
Richard Thomas dreamed big, too. His mother, Helen Thomas, was a force, a legend. Mrs. Thomas taught in the East Haddam school system. Many of us knew her as a substitute teacher. Our celebration with having a sub was quickly doused when we found out the sub was Mrs. Thomas! Mrs. Thomas saw to it that a good work ethic was instilled in Richard. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1953 and served two years in the Marines. Thomas joined Time magazine and was part of the last generation to work with Time Inc.’s co-founder Henry Luce. Thomas worked for Time for 31 years. He was the first advertising director of Money magazine.
In the mid-1970s, Thomas took on the job of advertising director for a startup magazine called People, which went on to become one of Time Inc.’s most successful publications. Richard Thomas retired in 1988 as the publisher of Time magazine. He passed on in 2000, but his legacy at Time lives on.
So what does this historical trip have to do with our students and graduates today? Everything. Their dreams and goals are just as big as those of Bernstein, Berwick and Thomas. They grew up with the same core values. Stop and think about the students and graduates you know. Chances are they are having a big influence on our lives, from the student working at the Gristmill to your doctor, lawyer, carpenter, teacher, artist, musician or software developer. Hale-Ray graduates are also serving the country in the military. The list goes on.
Today’s alumni are doing their part in boosting the next generation. Several years ago, the Nathan Hale-Ray Alumni Association was formed to assist graduating seniors with scholarships. The Alumni Association also provides a link to other graduates
through activities, the alumni website, Facebook and Twitter.
Two annual scholarships are given to seniors at awards night.
Our 2016 recipients, Matthew Tung and Everest Peacock, have goals that are no less impressive than those Bernstein, Berwick and Thomas had as graduates. Tung and Peacock were inducted into the National Honor Society, ran cross-country all four years and had outstanding academic achievements.
Tung is attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and majoring in computer science with a goal of being a software developer.
Peacock is attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute and majoring in chemical engineering.
Years from now, perhaps someone will write about Matt Tung or Everest Peacock. For now, those pages are blank. What we do know is this: Tradition runs deep here; one generation of alumni reaches out to pull the next one up, and the shoulders our graduates stand upon are broad and strong enough to support even the biggest dreams.