Guys and Dolls Reprise

BFS Commencement 2014
Our "Nathan Detroit" of 1980, Fisher Stevens '81
[Head of School Larry Weiss and Fisher Stevens '81]

This week's Middle and Upper School musical production of Guys and Dolls reminds your friendly historian that this great classic musical has been mounted at BFS on at least two other occasions (the school is interested in memories of other Guys and Dolls at BFS, come forward please!)

The first known BFS production of Guys and Dolls was in May, 1980. Its performances were dedicated to a great moment in BFS history that same month: celebrating the burning of the Pearl Street mortgage. Read more about the 1980 performance of Guys and Dolls in The Life, May 1980, page 3. Of note, Fisher Stevens '81 played Nathan Detroit; the recipient of the BFS George Fox Distinguished Alumnus Award last year at Commencement, Fisher Stevens' shared memories and words of wisdom for the Class of 2014.

The second known production of Guys and Dolls was in November, 2006. Both casts were terrific - saw it twice! No reviews of the 2006 production seem to survive, but a great article previewing the show and wonderful photos do!

2006: Luck, Be a Lady

2006: Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat

2006: Marry the Man Today

2006: Guys and Dolls - Finale/Reprise

Logo Nostalgia

Introducing Brooklyn Friends School's new visual identity is exciting, yet it also makes us fondly recall logos from our past. Let's take a look back at what can be considered our main logos through the years, beginning with today's and ending with our earliest-known visual identity.

"The Inner Light," 2014

In our new visual identity, the banner represents academic excellence, a core value of Brooklyn Friends School, while the eight-pointed star signifies the inner light of every BFS student. The star also reflects our Quaker heritage: an eight-pointed star was first used by British Quaker relief workers in the Franco-Prussian War and later adopted by the American Friends Service Committee in its own logo.

"Windows into BFS" 2006 to 2014. Over 20 different images provide glimpses into the BFS community, ranging from student artwork to BFS scenes; a few are below. "Windows" also saw BFS begin using the phrase "Inspiring minds and hearts since 1867."

 "Schoolhouse" ca. 1995 to 2005. Designed by long-time BFS employee Anne Garland, this logo referenced early 1990s artwork by BFS students which had previously been adopted for occasional school print materials.

"Friendship" ca. 1975 to 1994. Designed by BFS alum parents Leo and Diane Dillon, noted artists and illustrators. This image was, at times, modified by students to reflect both our school's and our student body's commitment to equity and social justice.

"School Seal" earlier than 1926 to 1975. Our school seal's earliest known print usage is on a 1926 literary magazine, though it was likely around long before. The school seal was incorporated into the Class of 1927's graduation gift to BFS, an artistic rendering of the Brooklyn Meeting House, still found on bookplates in some of our library's oldest books.

"Gift of the Class of 1927"

Printed materials at BFS did not always incorporate our school's visual identities. BFS letterhead apparently did not include images of any kind until 1975. Additionally, images were not used consistently in school letterhead during the 1990s. During this school year, BFS looks forward to fully incorporating its new visual identity into daily life of the school. 

Celebrating a new BFS newspaper

The Willoughby Street Journal, the latest BFS student newspaper

BFS has a new student newspaper, Willoughby Street Journal. First published less than one year ago, Willoughby Street Journal, named for our present Upper School building, has started this new school year strongly. WSJ (of BFS) is published in blog format and features editorials, articles and reviews of events at and beyond Brooklyn Friends School. At BFS, student newspapers are a co-curricular activity, yet all know student newspapers are one of the great academic fruits of all schools. WSJ is a young publication and it is great to see journalism back at BFS! 

BFS students have published magazines and newspapers for over 100 years, of course. Our earliest publications - The Squealer of 1912, The Junior Outlook, and1919-1931 editions of The Life - seem to have been published quarterly in magazine format and apparently more focused on student literature. 83 years ago this month, BFS published its first student newspaper in October of 1931, The Life, which, along with later BFS student newspapers like The Panther Press can be consulted in digital format at the Newspaper Section of the BFS Archives.

School journalism of any kind is a challenging commitment for already hardworking students, as known by all who have ever been involved in student publications. Please read The Willoughby Street Journal and encourage our students' continuing efforts. A little poem found in the BFS Archives seems appropriate today:

BFS Makes Groundbreaking History in Downtown Brooklyn

Breaking ground for the new BFS Upper School:
Trustees Brad Mulder '83 and Lara Holliday,
and US Head Bob Bowman

What a great moment in the history of our school! We often think of history as something that happened long ago, but we actually make history every day of our lives. Some moments are particularly impactful, like the one that happened just yesterday for Brooklyn Friends School as we broke ground on the future home of our Upper School at One MetroTech Center, almost one year after BFS signed our 49-year lease with Forest-City Ratner Companies. 

We so appreciate the many friends of BFS who share in this joyous moment, whether present or not among the crowd at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony. In case you missed it, there was a great article heralding our future Upper School home in Tuesday's New York Daily News - off about our school's age by almost 150 years, but no matter. This exciting and long-time dream for BFS will be realized at last, and it will happen best with your involvement.

Providing for the future growth of Brooklyn Friends School is critical to its success. Our school's long history and its expansion, growth and capital improvements occurred only because BFS community members recognized that the future of BFS is more important than its present at any given moment, and that future would only be possible with their stewardship of BFS and their charitable contributions to our annual giving campaign, our endowment and our capital campaigns. Please make your gift to the Brooklyn Friends Fund today and know that your school also needs your support and the support of every BFS community member for its endowment and its coming capital campaign for the new Upper School at One MetroTech.

BFS has certainly had other groundbreakings through the years, but whether we actually held groundbreaking ceremonies is unclear in records, even with insight from both the Property and Schools Committee Minutes of New York Monthly Meeting. Below is a brief timeline listing a few possible groundbreaking ceremonies from Brooklyn Friends School history:

One MetroTech Center,
future home of the BFS Upper School

1867: BFS opens at the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn.

1886: BFS's one-story addition to the Brooklyn Meeting House.

1902: BFS's "little red schoolhouse" at 112 Schermerhorn, "broke ground" on May 19, 1902.

1937: BFS's Friends School Field House.

1972: BFS began renovations of Pearl Street, February 29, 1972.

2006: BFS held a groundbreaking ceremony in the summer for the Charles A. Leeds, Jr. Rooftop Playground at Pearl Street, just one of the many capital improvements made possible by our 2005-2007 capital campaign.

Sledgehammers at the ready for yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony:
Eve Bromberg '15, Airenakhue Omoagbon '15, Head of School Larry Weiss, 
Jonathan Bach '15,Trustee Brad Mulder '83, Trustee Lara Holliday, Upper School Head Bob Bowman

BFS alumni at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony:Anand Vora '01, Richard Reiben '71, Director of Alumni Lekeia Varlack '99, Barbara Ingersoll Rothenberg '63, Derek Lynch, '89, Alap Vora '03, Karim Camara '88.

BFS school-year beginnings, today and yesterday

Brooklyn Friends School began its 148th school year this month with its traditional convocation. Our opening assembly for older students, held at the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn Street, came to be known as convocation in the early 1990s, yet this year's largest-ever student body required separate convocations for the middle and upper school divisions. Quite similar to years past, as one can see on this page from the 1916 Brooklyn Friends School catalog.

1916: Principal John L. Carver addresses the entire
BFS student body at a Thursday assembly

98 years ago,  each division, then called departments, held separate opening exercises just as we did this year. The photo above was taken at one of the bi-monthly assemblies of the entire school, in the exact same meeting room at the Brooklyn Meeting House. Since 1916, the meeting room has changed slightly and our entire student body has grown by perhaps 300 percent, but BFS and its historic home of the Brooklyn Meeting House remain beloved by students as one can see in this video of the upper school convocation, featuring the upper school student body singing our school song of today "Simple Gifts."

Simple Gifts 2014-15 from Brooklyn Friends School on Vimeo.

Play an important role at BFS - Friends Forever!

Read the Brooklyn Daily Eagle article 
"BFS Bests Calhoun for Volleyball Title"

Great moment last week at BFS: our Boys Varsity Volleyball team won the PSAA championship, an amazing feat for this first-year team. Our team's ranking, as of today at maxpreps.com: 120th in the U.S, 4th in New York State and 3rd in New York City. Congratulations to these student-athletes who will all return to boys volleyball next year, to our coaches and athletic department, and to BFS, our school which makes such moments possible for all of us. It is wonderful to have record of this achievement, so this historian once again wishes our school had a more complete record of all similar achievements at BFS, which brings us to the important role you can play.

1948 MAAPS League Baseball Championship
in which BFS defeated Fieldston at Fieldston.
Candid photo of Coach Wally Longley shaking the hand
of Leonard Von Heill '48 who pitched six consecutive
scoreless innings to seal the championship for BFS.
Photo courtesy of the late Patricia Doblin Bienfait '49

There have been many great athletes and teams at BFS, some won championships, invitational tournaments, and many alumni played with college and professional teams. Unfortunately, not all of our school's important athletic moments are noted anywhere in the records of BFS. Our Athletic Director David Gardella has been compiling his own list of BFS championships, our college and professional alumni-athletes, and other athletic milestones from 1996 to the present, but BFS needs your assistance in gaining a more complete record for all years earlier.

This historian is assisting by compiling a record of BFS athletic achievements for all years prior to 1996, that can be added to the record now kept by the Athletics Department. To do this, one can search the historic Brooklyn Daily Eagle in the hope that BFS made the paper. Alternatively, one can pore through our school's incomplete run of student newspapers, newsletters, or yearbooks, hoping that an important moment for our school got even the briefest mention in our own publications. Such time-consuming efforts yielded the knowledge that we had a Boys Varsity Softball team that won at least four back-to-back league championships in the late 1970s. We have photographs that now preserve some of our older banners, but they do not shed nearly enough light. BFS simply needs your memories to fill in the blanks in its own history.

Please take a moment to reflect on your BFS memories, to share your knowledge of BFS athletic history and to let us know of the post-BFS athletic careers of alumni, some of whom may be reading this themselves.

Friends Forever - Blue Pride!!! 

For Earth Day, join BFS for an Earth Hour today, 1:30-2:30 pm Eastern

The Earth Flag

Today is Earth Day. 44 years ago on this day, BFS students were part of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and you can read all about it on page 6 of the May, 1970 edition of The Life and journalist Stephen Magagnini, BFS Class of '72, briefly recalled that first Earth Day in his 2002 BFS Alum Profile. Many of our Upper School students attended rallies throughout New York City that day, joining millions in raising awareness of the need for environmental protection and stewardship. One of the concerns students raised in that article was that BFS itself did not recognize Earth Day school-wide in 1970, but we do today as we have done for several years and we so hope you will join BFS today! 

In 2014, BFS reduces, reuses, and recycles as much as possible every day, but Earth Day offers a special opportunity to educate the BFS community about our environment and our world. Individual classes often approach Earth Day uniquely, but among our larger school-wide initiatives are several of note:

The amazing team in our Cafeteria has responded to Upper School students suggestions by providing strictly vegan offerings for the entirety of Earth Day, a first at BFS. Chef Tom Buckley wrote to our faculty this week: "This is probably the most ambitious Earth Day project that my department has ever been asked to be a part of...  Please show your support for what these upper schoolers are doing..." 

Also happening in the BFS cafeteria, middle and upper school students will compete in a food weigh-in to raise awareness of food waste. Lower and pre-school students have been welcomed to join the effort in their classrooms and several of our juniors are creating a video PSA to explain more. Waste is deeply rooted in the economics of our food system and between one-quarter and one-half of the United States' food supply is wasted or destroyed every year. A food weigh-in can help raise awareness of what it takes to get food to our tables and reduce food waste. 

And finally, please join BFS as it observes an "Earth Hour" from 1:30 to 2:30 pm today. All it takes is for you to shut off your lights, power down your devices and reduce your use of electricity for one hour. As Janet Villas, BFS science teacher and environmental action coordinator wrote of Earth Day this week, "... green initiatives should be part of our daily lives and not wasting food and shutting the lights for one hour is something we all can easily do."

And, if you can, get outside today. Whether it's sunny or rainy, we can each take a moment to renew our commitment as stewards of this planet Earth and in the hope of making every day Earth Day. 

Let Your Films Speak: The Bridge Film Festival,15 Years Young

"Know your history, ask questions and follow your heart." 

Garrett Bradley, BFS '03, Bridge Film Festival alumna

It's Spring Break, but it's also time to reserve your tickets for the 15th annual Bridge Film Festival on Thursday, April 10 at BFS. The festival was established in 1999 at BFS by Andy Cohen, BFS director of media services, and it celebrates Quaker ideals in action via short films created by students in grades 5 through 12 from Friends schools and Friends meetings around the world. Judges are members of the film industry and related fields, and selecting finalists is always difficult. Festival director Andy Cohen was interviewed in 2009 on the origins of the Bridge Film Festival. In its short history, the Bridge Film Festival has become an important way for young artists to connect and collaborate while creating purposeful, values-based films which spring from their common background in Quakerism. The founder of Quakerism George Fox once famously stated "Let your life speak," so the Bridge Film Festival encourages young filmmakers to "Let your films speak."

Great moments in BFS Basketball, 1925 and today

1925, BFS Boys Basketball Team,
with the Friends School League
Championship Trophy

It's a great basketball season for BFS teams, so today let's look back 89 years ago to February of 1925, when BFS won the Friends Schools national title in boys basketball by defeating Wilmington Friends. The BFS Digital Archives has this photo of our 1925 boys basketball team, with the Friends School trophy, which rests just outside our lower gym at Pearl Street today.

Happy Holidays - Yesterday and Today

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!

A moment from a 1930s Lower School Christmas Pageant.

And a moment from this year's Holiday Sing when, for the first time ever, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was sung outside.

Post by Brooklyn Friends School.

Bayard Rustin Honored & New York Quakers Apologize to Afro-Descendants

Bayard Rustin

Following up to my Gatekeeper No More post of November 7. That post shared the known history of our school's winding path to integration which helped Brooklyn Friends School become the racially and ethnically diverse school it is known to be today. A few related and important events occurred last month.

1867 to 1886 and Our First Expansion - Part 2 of Our Buildings, Our History

Look at the right of this ca. 1893 photo of the Germania Club to see the Brooklyn Meeting House at the far right. Look closely to see the snow on what seems to be the rooftop of our school's 1886 building  just east of the Meeting House.

In light of the great news of the most recent expansion of BFS, a new home for the Upper School, it's a good time to return to my series on the history of our school's buildings. My first entry in the series covered the first building to house BFS, the Brooklyn Meeting House, built in 1857 and extended to the school's first year, the 1867-1868 school year. Today, we take a look at the years 1868 to 1886 to understand our school's first physical expansion. The photo on the right shows what I believe is the 1886 building, the very first expansion of BFS.

The words of then-principal Susan P. Peckham to the Trustees of the Schools of New York Monthly Meeting: "Our enlarged and improved accommodations are a source of much gratification to the teachers and scholars and I believe they will prove of the greatest importance as a means of making the school more healthy, more orderly and more prosperous. The scholars certainly appear happy, industrious and well-behaved; the manner in which they have begun the work of the year is most satisfactory."

Why was a new building necessary? The school's early years were successful and Brooklyn was growing. The school needed more space for students and more space would help our excellent educational program both keep and grow with the changing times - much the same as our reasons for expanding today.

A BFS Tradition, Learning through Service

1995 - Service at the "Park"
(now known as the Marriott)

Certainly, there are myriad ways in which we all contribute to the greater good of our world, but BFS has a long tradition of encouraging its students and families to learn through giving their time, energy and monies to non-profit organizations, including to BFS. Last year's article about BFS students helping families overseas after World War II is just one of many examples of our school's long-standing commitment to community service. BFS has just engaged a new Director of Service Learning, Natania Kremer, who is profiled in a recent article at the BFS website, and states "...it's wonderful to be looking at service learning schoolwide starting at age 2." Also wonderful is that Natania joins us right in time to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the service learning graduation requirement at BFS.

All About Norregaard

BFS celebrated Martin Norregaard's 50 years with BFS with much fanfare at Reunion 2011. To jog your memories, Martin taught Middle School English and Social Studies from 1961 to 1991, then retired although he taught part-time for the next two years. After 1993, he remained in close contact with BFS and soon became a Trustee. Mr. N. is doing just fine as I write these words and collect Norregaardiana for the school's digital archives. Please feel free to suggest words that might be better than "Norregaardiana."