By Jeff Otterbein

We asked people in the school community what sights and sounds, for them, define Loomis Chaffee. We got an earful. And an eyeful.

 

The Train, Always the Train

After she lists a few sights and sounds that define Loomis Chaffee, Mandy Carroll ’94 knows her list could not be complete without this:

“Oh, and the train, of course, the sound of the train all the time!” Mandy, the associate director of the Annual Fund, says. She provides the exclamation point, fitting for the sound that punctuates what it means to live, learn, and work on this campus. 

“Definitely the train going by — love it!” says Lori Caligiuri, a teacher and administrator. “I am always reminded of how much it is part of our landscape when visitors pause when they hear it or I have to stop a Zoom call until it passes.”

“The train,” Sophie Singer ’26 says. “Constantly. … That used to be my alarm. I’d hear the train and know exactly what time it was.”

As does math teacher K.C. Lawler. “The train at 11 p.m.,” is a signature sound of the Island.

The train. Always the train, no matter where you are on campus. 

“Because I live in a house near the train tracks, the chirping of the warning bells and the roar of the train will forever remind me of Loomis,” says Jessica Matzkin, director of the well-being.

“The horn as it passes the intersection on Island Road and when heading north, several intersections before,” says history teacher J.R. Zavisza says, who hears the trains from Faculty Row, where he lives; from Brush Library, where he teaches; and from the Savage/Johnson Rink, where he coached hockey for many years, just a few yards away from the train crossing.

Ashton McNair ’26 grew up in Spencerport, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. “I was not used to the sound of a train, but became desensitized to it,” he says. “At first it was shocking because I didn’t realize how relevant trains still were. Where I grew up, we’re spread out, took cars everywhere. Here, people use trains all the time.”

And hear them all the time. A check of CTRail and Amtrak shows passenger trains traveling on the outskirts of campus 19 times on a weekday, the earliest at 4:41 a.m., the final about 20 hours later at 12:05 a.m. That’s a lot of railroad crossing warning signals and train horns. Not to mention all the freight trains that come through.
 

The Meadows and the Fog

“I have the privilege of being an early morning runner, which means I see most sunrises on campus. Add the thick fog in the Meadows or running over the causeway, and it’s positively fantastical. Would anyone guess that a beloved institution is hiding behind all of that?” — Katharine Conklin, teacher and associate director of the Norton Family Center for the Common Good

“The Meadows. I actually enjoyed watching them flood for the first time.” — Science teacher Crystal Peña

“Morning fog on campus. ... The cheers from the Meadows when the Pelicans score a goal.” — Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing Lynn Petrillo ’86

A Sensory Education

Each member of the Loomis Chaffee community sees and hears the campus through their own eyes and ears, of course. And each experiences the Island from their own unique perspective. 

Teachers can stitch their perceptions together with the thread of learning. 

“For me, Loomis Chaffee sounds like footsteps on brick, laughter echoing down dorm hallways, and quiet concentration in a studio filled with ideas in progress,” says Visual Arts Department Head Ro Clark ’97. “It looks like students gathered around a piece of work, talking through possibilities, the glow of the Richmond Art Center at night, and the campus shifting with the seasons from still winter mornings to the energy of spring. It is a place where creativity, community, and daily life overlap in small, meaningful moments.”

For modern and classical languages teacher Sandrine Sebag, familiar sights and sounds on campus mark the annual cycle of learning.

“What comes to mind first is the rhythm of the seasons across campus,” she says. “In the fall, it’s the crunch of leaves underfoot on the way to class. There’s also that golden October light settling over the quad, filtering into classrooms where new words begin to take shape. 

“In winter, the campus quiets, but our classrooms feel alive, filled with the cadence of new words being learned, the rhythm of repetition, bursts of laughter over a mispronounced word, and the small triumphs of crafting a perfect sentence in French.”

“Spring feels like a release. Windows open. You hear birds again, along with the distant echo of a practice or a game. In the classroom, conversations stretch more freely, ideas travel further, and students begin to find their voice in the language with greater ease. The campus feels alive with a different energy, yet that distinctive Loomis harmony remains — alongside the vibrant, multilingual energy of a community constantly in motion.”

English teacher Stephen Colgate finds a familiar rhythm in the sounds of Chaffee Hall waking up. “My office is just inside the front door to Chaffee,” he says. “The building is always so quiet before classes start, but the first student arriving in the morning opens that door to break the silence. Then the next student. And the next. The sound of the door opening increases in frequency, and the volume of conversation in the hallway grows and grows until all the noise settles into the classrooms, and I can hear the muted sounds of greetings, and colleagues and students starting the day. To me, that noise will always sound like a wave of momentum building toward scholarship.”

Fittingly, sounds are central to Susan Chrzanowski’s Island experience. She teaches music, directs the vocal ensembles, and serves as head of the Performing Arts Department. She describes “the harmonious cacophony I take in while sitting at my desk surrounded by practice rooms with the [Hubbard] Performance Hall at my back and the Hoffman Large Ensemble Room down the hallway. I am constantly listening to simultaneous musical phrases, drills, excerpts.”

“I wrote to [former Head of School] Sheila [Culbert] once during COVID when the campus was quiet and I was in my office,” Sue recalls. The building was most empty except for Sue and two colleagues in the English Department during the global shutdown. But, says Sue, “I could have sworn I heard that harmonious cacophony. It’s part of my Loomis Chaffee world.”

“On spring nights,” she continues, “the frogs ‘singing’ join the melodies still in my head from rehearsal or recital. The sound makes me take a breath and realize how soon summer will come and how much the students have accomplished during the year.”

The Quad Squad

When Bryant T. Folles Jr. ’57 wrote about the architecture of the Grubbs Quadrangle for the 100th anniversary of Loomis Chaffee, he called it “the dominant, aesthetically compelling, and community-enhancing core of the Loomis Chaffee campus.” 

Community dinners, class reunions, Commencement bring people together on Grubbs Quad, which sits between Founders Hall and the Scanlan Campus Center. The Rockefeller Quad, on the south side of the campus center and featuring a colorful array of Adirondack chairs, also is a place where students hang out. Ratté Quad is yet another hub on campus. Everywhere you look there’s something: the community garden, the greenhouse, the visual and performing arts buildings. And if you’re there around 8:28 a.m. on a class day, you’ll see the familiar sight of a student or two or three scurrying from the other end of campus toward Chaffee Hall as they realize they are almost late to their first class of the day. After all, who’s moving too fast in the morning?

These places take on lives of their own. Few say Rockefeller Quad. It’s “Rock Quad.” Few say Grubbs Quad. It’s just “the Quad” or “the Senior Quad.” 

When Sophie Singer ’26 thinks of the sights that define Loomis Chaffee, she mentions the Senior Path, which runs down the middle of Grubbs Quad. And then there is the frequent stopping-off point outside Taylor Hall.

“Seeing Mr. Taylor with his shining nose, rubbing that nose — no one had that superstition or the tradition of rubbing his nose before they came to Loomis Chaffee, but everyone is so integrated into the community when they come here that if they need a boost of luck, they’ll rub his nose,” Sophie says.

Who can argue that the tradition of rubbing John Metcalf Taylor’s nose on the bas-relief sculpture by Evelyn Longman Batchelder won’t help make your day?   

The quads generate a multitude of Loomis Chaffee sights and sounds, as evidenced by these top picks from community members:

“Faculty children shouting, giggling, zooming on Rock Quad after dinner,” math teacher K.C. Lawler says. “And student voices and music floating over Grubbs Quad on the weekend.”

“Students gathered on Grubbs Quad in warmer months laughing, reading, playing spike ball, frisbee,” says Paige Abrams, associate director of alumni & parent relations. 

“Mowers on the Quad,” a sound that also conjures the smell of freshly-cut grass, says Deidre Swords, director of the Annual Fund.

“Students hanging out in Rockefeller Quad. New students playing games outside during orientation,” says Lynn Petrillo ’86, director of strategic communications and marketing.

“The sound of students’ music carrying across the Quad and the football field in the fall and when spring finally arrives — you can feel the bass on some days,” says Michelle Carr, assistant to alumni and parent relations.

And a special Grubbs Quad nod goes to this sight and sound from Michelle: “Catching glimpses of prom proposals — one year, a student even hired a mariachi band on the quad, and we watched it unfold from the office [in Founders Hall],” she recalls.
 

 

“My own distinctive memory was summoned a while ago during a climb up an old wooden staircase here in Baltimore. I had to pause ... I knew that sound...‘My God! I’m back in Founders!’ I thought to myself. I hope that no one ever tries to tighten or tune up that collection of scalloped boards. They heralded the arrival of a woefully unprepared freshman in the fall of ’65, and they greeted a halting septuagenarian last spring ... and oh, it’s the same lovely old song.”

Al Freihofer ’69
Former Faculty and Former Trustee

Waterfowl and Other Critters

Canada geese — hundreds of them using the Meadows as their landing strip, strolling about, taking a dip in the Cow Pond — can get a bad rap. 

They are a signature Loomis Chaffee sight, mentioned by many with at least a hint of aggravation. 

“Noisy, dirty geese,” is how one staffer views them.

Says another: “The sound of the geese in the Meadows — which I could hear very clearly from my second-floor apartment in Carter when I lived there — very loud and annoying.”

“The first thing that comes to mind for me are the cacophonous honks of the Canada geese as they fly in in huge numbers to land on the Cow Pond or the Hockey Pond, or flooded areas. My window faces Founders Circle, and even when it’s closed, I can hear them loud and clear,” says Mandy Carroll ’94, associate director of the Annual Fund. 

Cacophonous, indeed!

Are the Canada geese good or bad for the Meadows? Ecologically speaking, they help plant diversity and wetland regeneration
by spreading seeds. Still, they generally are regarded as a nuisance, unlike much of the other wildlife seen and heard on campus.   

“The sight and sound of red-winged blackbirds in the spring along the edges of the Meadows — their trill is distinctive, as is the flash of red shoulder feathers on the male birds,” says Becky Purdy, associate director of communications. “When I begin to hear and then see them, I know spring is arriving. Also in the spring: The sound of peepers. One of my favorite nature sounds, a harbinger of spring and summer.”

The peepers and many other sounds of our natural neighbors stick out for Director of Marketing Mary Forrester. Here are two more: “The great horned owl hooting and the coyotes howling at night.”  

Math Department Head Adnan Rubai can’t resist the haiku form as he thinks of Loomis sights and sounds. 

Coyotes howling 
To the moon rising above 
The Meadows awake

“I enjoy seeing the wildlife on campus,” says Kevin Osborn of the Physical Plant. “The blue heron by the causeway, the bald eagle by the river. There are almost always some hawks about. There are the coyotes, geese, and families of deer out in the fields. All the rabbits and squirrels everywhere. As well as all the friendly faculty dogs.”

Stand still for a moment in the morning or evening on the outskirts of campus to hear a symphony of calls, chirps, songs, and squawks from the many birds that inhabit the Island.

Tristan Buttimer’s senior capstone project this year for his Global & Environmental Studies Certificate involved building bird houses and taking a group on a bird walk in the Meadows, where the group saw robins, red-winged blackbirds, blue jays, cardinals, and a downy woodpecker. A sharp-shinned hawk flew overhead. A wood duck that had been perched on a branch took flight as the group approached. 

What is it about birds that people find fascinating? 

“Part of it is the nature of birds,” Tristan says. “They fly, they sing, they’re beautiful. It is the wonder of nature in one tiny package.”
 

In Closing ...

Commencement morning on Grubbs Quadrangle has a buzz to it as families arrive on campus and soon-to-be graduates mill about with friends. There are family photo ops, selfies with friends, laughs shared.

At the appointed time, assuming good weather, students and faculty process from Grubbs Quad, pass through the center of Founders Hall, and re-emerge in Founders Circle, where the graduation scene is laid out before them, the chairs and stage arranged with precision between the Homestead and the Head’s House.  

“The beauty of Commencement,” is how Chief Advancement Officer Tim Struthers ’85 describes it.

Just hours later, after food and fun, life moves on.

Associate Director of Communications Becky Purdy describes the shift this way: “Commencement Day, late afternoon: the silence and the empty quad. It seems to happen all of a sudden after so much activity in the days leading up to and including graduation and senior move-out, and it’s surprisingly soothing. The quiet and stillness descend like someone has spread a soft quilt over a drowsy toddler.”

In the days leading up to Commencement this year, a community dinner and Prom were held under a big tent that stretched across most of Grubbs Quad. On graduation day, students, faculty, and family huddled under that tent as a cold rain fell. Within minutes after Commencement ceremonies concluded, all had gone to the dining hall. The tent was empty except for LC grounds crew members. And, by late afternoon the stillness had returned, and the tent stood empty, soon to be disassembled.