But his desire to help people is stronger than that fear.
The 2015 Staples High School graduate is a junior business major at Northeastern University. He’s also community service chair at his fraternity, Delta Tau Delta.
When he saw a “Give Pints for Half Pints” sign at Boston Children’s Hospital, his next project was born.
Within days, he pitched a blood donor idea to his 100 brothers. Dozens responded.
Mat jacowleff (right) and a fraternity brother, with a commendation from Boston Children’s Hospital.
Mat was especially touched by a friend who approached him after the meeting. He said his younger sister had a disease that required frequent hospital stays — at Boston Children’s.
“Having someone I personally know say that to me really put things into perspective,” Mat explains. “It’s hard to imagine how much of an impact one donation can make if you don’t need it, or someone you love doesn’t need it. Having someone bridge that gap made me even more determined to make this event happen.”
The hospital responded as enthusiastically as Mat and his frat brothers have. The first day, the donors got pizza — in a room decorated in Northeastern’s black and red colors.
They were excited — and told the rest of the house. The next night. 20 more guys showed up.
“The best part is watching the impact this has had on my friends,” Mat says. “They come in hesitant and nervous. But they walk out with the biggest smiles on their faces, and they’re ready to book their next appointment.”
A hospital rep is impressed. “Planting the seed for long-term donation is key,” says donor recruitment team member Cynthia MacKinlay.
“People come once and they feel great. But once they come 2, 3 and 4 times, it becomes a habit.”
Mat continues to recruit donors. Already, another fraternity and one sorority have set up donation nights.
“If you are in a position of influence — as small as it may be — and you arent’ using it to make an impact, it’s a waste,” Mat says.
“I’m hoping this goes big. If donating blood becomes a trend at Northeastern, then it can spread to other schools in Boston and so on. There’s really no limit.”
(Hat tip: Gaetana Deiso. To read a fuller story from Boston Children’s Hospital’s blog, click here.)
And — according to Sporting News — it may be the start of “a different relationship in the future between on-air talent and TV networks” everywhere.
McKendry — a Westport resident — spent 20 years anchoring “SportsCenter.”
Now she’s a fulltime tennis sportscaster. As Grand Slam host, she travels the world covering the US Open, Wimbledon and Australian Open.
But that leaves plenty of time to raise her 2 sons.
Or — if she wants — to work for another network. (Just not on tennis.)
This summer, the former Drexel University tennis player hosted over 150 hours of US Open Coverage. The 16-hour days — for 2 long weeks — were grueling. But it was worth it. Ratings were up 8% over last year.
Sporting News’ interview with McKendry covered a range of topics. To read the full transcript, click here.
Ken Burns’ epic, 10-part PBS series “The Vietnam War” shines a spotlight on one of the most consequential, divisive and controversial events in American history.
Like all of Burns’ masterful works it combines visual images, music and 1st-person accounts, plus the insights of experts with a wide array of perspectives.
One of those contributors has Westport roots.
Marc Selverstone
Marc Selverstone adds his wisdom, as chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The project produces scholarly transcripts of secret White House tapes, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.
The 1980 Staples High School graduate — who earned a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in history from Ohio University — also serves as an associate professor at UVa.
His contribution began 6 years ago, with a call from co-producer Sarah Botstein. Selverstone sorted through “countless” Vietnam-related transcripts, and forwarded them on. It was an arduous — but crucial — process.
The next phase of collaboration began in the fall of 2015. Selverstone and Ken Hughes — the Miller Center’s Nixon expert — spent 4 days watching the entire series at WNET in New York, with Burns and the full Florentine Films team.
Also in attendance were key figures who appear in the film: Tim O’Brien, Les Gelb, Hal Kushner and many more.
“To hear their stories on film, then speak to them — because they’re sitting right next to you — was a profound and immersive experience,” Selverstone says. “It offered access to the war, and its era, that’s hard to come by.”
Born in 1962, he remembers the assassinations 6 years later of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. He recalls too the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium protest — he was there with his father, then-Staples guidance counselor Bob Selverstone — but as an adult he’s studied Vietnam as a scholar.
“I did not have a lot of contact with people who shared so much of themselves, and the way they’d been affected by the war,” he notes.
Though the film was nearly finished, Selverstone offered feedback. He was impressed that Burns’ team was “really concerned about getting it ‘right.'”
Selverstone then worked closely with co-producer Lynn Novick on post-production, and on an Atlantic story she and Burns published last week called “How Americans Lost Faith in the Presidency.”
Now, Selverstone is writing a chapter on President Kennedy, for the upcoming “Cambridge History of the Vietnam War.” He met with Burns, Novick and the 15 other scholars involved in that book, prior to a public presentation for 1,000 people at Dartmouth College.
Selverstone has been involved in a few recent events surrounding the film too. Last week he was at the Kennedy Center with John McCain, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.
He’ll be at a special screening of the final episode in Washington on September 28. The next day he’s a panelist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In November he’ll join Novick for a Q-and-A at the Virginia Film Festival.
Meanwhile, Selverstone is busy building the Miller Center’s pages to provide more content to visitors to the PBS “Vietnam” website.
Selverstone is glad for the buzz around the film. “I hope it provides an opportunity for the country to think about its past, about those who suffered and sacrificed, and about us as a collective,” he says.
“Ken talks about how frequently we focus on the ‘pluribus’ at the expense of the ‘unum.’ If these 2 weeks and their extension into the fall allow us to take comfort through a moment of national uplift — to watch this film together, as a people, and celebrate those who endured — then it might have a tonic effect on a country sorely in need of one.”
Burns’ film has another Westport connection. Christian Appy — who graduated from Staples 8 years before Selverstone, and is now a University of Massachusetts history professor and Vietnam expert — is writing 7 articles about the film for the Organization of American Historians.
Christian Appy, and his book.
Appy — the author of “American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity” — says that Burns’ film will reach more people than any book ever written about the war. It could rival audiences for films like “Apocalypse Now” and “Platoon.”
Thus, Appy says, it is critical that “history teachers of all kinds — not just Vietnam War specialists — give this documentary serious attention.”
Over 200 people were killed — and many more lives devastated — during yesterday’s magnitude-7.1 earthquake in Mexico City. “06880” reader Alejandro Garcia writes:
As a Mexican living in Westport, I’ve been humbled over the last few hours by the displays of concern from local friends regarding yesterday’s earthquake.
Our family has been part of Westport for just over 3 years, and the quality of the human relationships we have now is beyond my biggest expectations.
Alejandro Garcia
As I type this, the death toll stands at 225 and counting. I am blessed to report my close ones are fine, but a high school classmate did lose a 19-year-old nephew at his college. Above all, everyone is still terrified.
For those of you who are not in Mexican social media networks, you are not aware of the incredible displays of solidarity I have been witness to from afar. People are selflessly working around the clock as volunteers. Some of them are lifting rubble, others are preparing and delivering food. Others have opened up their homes for strangers to sleep in, wash up.
I witnessed this as a teenager in a similar earthquake in 1985, 32 years to the day yesterday. The quality of a society or a human being is most visible in moments of adversity, so this solidarity makes me extremely proud of my roots, as much as I love and call Westport and the USA home now. It brings tears to my eyes.
Mexicans are resilient. We will pull through. Nobody is asking for handouts. That is not our style. I have nonetheless been asked by several people how they can help. If you are so inclined, I have vetted through my contacts what the best ways are. There are a couple of options:
Go to comoayudar.mx, and set the “Filtrar por locacion” filter to global. My apologies; it is only in Spanish. There is a list of organizations that take PayPal. Any amount makes a difference.
Amazon has partnered with the local Red Cross. RC created a wish list that can be fulfilled through Amazon. The beauty of this is that it is updated by the local Red Cross in real time, as it detects needs. It can’t be more targeted than this. Go to Amazon.com.mx.
Above all, thank you for the human solidarity. May you and your families never need to face this level of human suffering.
Mexicans helped each other in the hours after Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. Now it’s time for Westporters to help too.
In elementary school, Emerson Kobak was the target of bullies.
“I was really short. I wore glasses. People just weren’t nice,” Emerson recalls.
The result, she says, was that “for so long I didn’t feel like I had a voice. I was always nervous about speaking. I worried that whatever I said was wrong.”
Emerson Kobak, in elementary school.
Middle school — with its intense social pressure — was even worse.
Looking back, she says, if she saw someone sitting alone during lunch, she’d go over and join them.
“One act of kindness can change a whole life,” she says.
When Emerson entered Staples 3 years ago, she looked around for kindred spirits. She founded the Fashion For a Cause Club with like-minded designers. On weekends she studied drawing and sewing at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
As a sophomore, Emerson joined Kool To Be Kind. Last year she discovered the Anti-Defamation League. Emerson co-wrote the introduction to a schoolwide “Truth About Hate” assembly, then spoke at it. She also addressed Staples’ school climate assembly.
The girl who was once afraid to speak up had found her voice.
That voice — and Emerson’s drive to fight bullying — has found an important outlet, thanks to her passion for fashion. Her 2nd annual “Fashion For a Cause” show is set for this Sunday (September 24, 5 p.m., Toquet Hall).
Emerson Kobak, before the junior prom. She made her dress herself.
Emerson will show one collection. Fellow senior Alessandra Nagar will show another. Students will model all outfits — all of which were created by club members. There’s also live music by a Staples band, and food from local restaurants.
Brenda Lewis — the soprano whose range of vocal styles brought her great fame in opera houses and on Broadway — died here last weekend. She was 96, and had lived in Westport for many years.
Lewis inspired audiences worldwide — and musicians in our town.
Alexander Platt — the 1983 Staples High School graduate who returned recently to lead the Westport Arts Center’s concert series — posted this remembrance on the influential Slippedisc cultural website blog:
When one loses an especially close friend, one feels as if one has lost a part of oneself. From the moment she discovered me over 30 years ago, as an aspiring conductor fresh out of high school, Brenda Lewis was one of my dearest lifelong friends, “the Jewish grandmother I’d never had” as we used to jokingly recall.
Brenda Lewis (Photo courtesy of New York Times and Opera News)
Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” and Walton’s “Facade” were just two of the narration projects we undertook together, at Yale and beyond. Throughout, she was a fount of goodness, wit, wisdom, generosity, great knowledge, and tough advice (more of which I wish I’d followed).
Her recording of “Regina” will always be the authoritative interpretation of this great American opera — as with her own career, something always underrated, and it was a relief to see that her work in the first production of Barber’s “Vanessa” was finally acknowledged.
From her earliest days, she was an utterly self-made artist, always mixing Broadway with summer stock and some of the world’s great operatic stages, from New York to Vienna. As I once exclaimed to her, “Brenda, ‘crossover’ — you invented crossover!”
Or as she put it to me once, wistfully, “Wherever I was singing — on Broadway, in a classroom, in a barn somewhere, or singing ‘Carmen’ or ‘Salome’ at the Met — I was just so happy to be performing…..” — such great advice for so many of us, at this difficult time for music.
With Brenda’s death a magnificent mid-century golden age in New York’s operatic history is now gone — to my knowledge, she was the last of that line — but “there will always be a Lionnet,” and there will always be a Brenda, in my heart.
(For Brenda Lewis’ full New York Times obituary, click here.)
The Westport Farmers’ Market is proud of its many vendors. They sell honey, ice cream, tamales and pizza, along with the usual (and delicious) fruits, vegetables and meats.
Today they’re particularly proud of one.
Patti Popp has just been named 2017 Farmer of the Year.
That’s not some silly online poll. The honor comes from the Farmers’ Almanac and the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Popp is one of 3 outstanding farmers or ranchers throughout the country — and the only woman. All were chosen for their support of the farming tradition; innovation in agriculture; community involvement, and inspiration as an agricultural leader.
Popp grows produce, and raises chickens and pigs, at Sport Hill Farm in Easton. She operates a community-supported agriculture program, and a retail store sellling locally grown and crafted goods.
Patti Popp and friends.
In the summer Sport Hill Farm sponsors a children’s camp. She hosts other events throughout the year, including farm-to-table dinners and workshops.
Popp calls herself an “accidental farmer.” In 2000 she and her husband purchased a home with enough property to grow vegetables and raise chickens.
They learned to farm by trial and error — reading books, and asking questions of other farmers.
Westport Farmers’ Market director Lori Cochran-Dougall says, “Not only does Patti grow some of the choicest food in the area, she gives of herself to the community in an unparalleled way.
“We always count on Patti to dig in when we need anything — from offering fresh food, to partnering with local chefs, to volunteering for events that help folks make a connection between the farm and our food system.”
You can see the national Farmer of the Year at the Westport market on Imperial Avenue every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., now through November 9.
Fred Cantor graduated from Staples High School in 1971. After Yale University he got a law degree, married, and worked and lived in New York.
But his heart was always in Westport. He and his wife, Debbie Silberstein, bought a place here for weekends and summers. Then they moved in fulltime.
It’s a decision Fred never regretted — in part because of his close-knit neighborhood.
That friendly spirit remains. Fred reports:
Fred Cantor (Photo/Lynn U. Miller)
My family moved to Westport in 1963, when I was in 4th grade, and I have many fond memories of my childhood here. Our home was on Easton Road. I spent many afternoons and weekends playing and/or hanging out with friends on nearby Silverbrook. It was a true neighborhood — at least for kids.
I know a number of “06880” readers lament some of the changes in town in the decades since that time. But I can attest that the small-town, neighborhood feeling is alive and well on the street my wife and I have lived on for the past 20+ years: Drumlin Road.
One prime example: This past weekend we had our annual road barbecue. Close to 50 residents turned out.
The ages ranged from 91 to just under 2 years old. Homeowners who lived on Drumlin since the mid-1950s chatted with a family with young daughters, who moved here just a few months ago.
Every household brought a dish (many were homemade).
Generations mixed (and ate) together at the Drumlin Road party. (Photo/James Delorey)
The friendly interactions during the party reflect the year-round atmosphere. It’s not unusual to see residents helping out each other out. One man put his new snowblower to use in a winter storm, clearing the sidewalks of his elderly neighbors.
One of my favorite sights is seeing kids come off the school bus and — believe it or not — not stare down at their iPhones but instead talk and mess around with their friends or siblings as they head up the street to their homes. Later in the afternoon, they kick a soccer ball in the front yard, or shoot a basketball in the driveway.
Kids had a great time too at the neighborhood event. (Photo/James Delorey)
Perhaps the size of the lots — 1/4 acre — and the horseshoe shape of the road contribute to the neighborly character of the street. Whatever the reason, my wife and I feel fortunate to have lived more than 2 decades in a place that — to borrow from the slogan of the old Westport Bank & Trust — is truly a small-town neighborhood in a town of homes.
All ages posed for this Drumlin Road party photo, by James Delorey.
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