Senior Speakers [Oct. 23]

The senior speaker series continued on October 23 featuring six members of the Class of 2021: Rose Caso, Jennah DeGout, Cassie Dumay, Madeline Lemza, Barrett Grant, and Aubrey Healer.

The series launched with the Class of 2017 as an addition to the chapel program where all seniors delivered a speech, presentation, or performance to the Suffield Academy community. Head of School Charlie Cahn said he hoped the program would serve as a formative experience for the seniors, an opportunity to strengthen community, and a way to continue providing engaging chapel programming. These talks are supplemented by traditional chapel events including the Alumni Leadership Day program, Student Council Elections, and Kent-Davis Speaking Competition during Commencement week.

From Ellington, Connecticut, Rose Caso is one of three sister-athletes to attend Suffield. She spoke about her passion for sports, loving support from her parents, and the particularly strong bond she shares with her father: “I decided to branch out from my sisters and follow in my dad’s footsteps by playing basketball. In so doing I established the strongest bond I could with my father. It won’t be long now until you [dad] see me playing in a Quinnipiac jersey like you did 33 years ago. Remember, this journey was never just mine; it was ours.”

Jennah DeGout is a two-year senior from Bronx, New York, who read from her college essay entitled “Fitting the Description.” She cited, “If someone asked me today who I was I would stop and think, hesitating to give the correct and safest answer rather than the answer I want to give. Society and social media have put into people’s minds what is beautiful and perfect. Fitting the description is something I have struggled with but it’s ok to not know who you are or what things describe you.”

From Plattsburgh, New York, Maddy Lemza is a talented swimmer and skilled builder. She detailed her experience renovating the family’s house on Lake Champlain. “I dug deep, kept pushing, stuck with it, and learned the importance of grit and gratitude,” she said. “Two and a half years, one torn meniscus, two broken hands, hundreds of YouTube videos, and countless trips to Lowe’s later, the poorly winterized camp had become our home.”

Cassie Dumay is an artist from East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and her favorite color is gray. She explained, “When I think of gray, what immediately comes to mind is the most compelling and pervasive concept I’ve encountered in my short 17 years: the idea of nuance. My multicultural background and complex racial identity introduced me to the concept of nuance at a young age. My intellectual, social, and artistic self is characterized by the hours and years of my life I’ve —sometimes unknowingly— spent searching through the gray area.”

Home to over 500 boys each summer, Camp Dudley (Adirondack Mountains) is the oldest sleep-away camp in the US. A native of Ridgefield, Connecticut, Barrett Grant explained what he learned by the unexpected acting debut he made there in Witherbee Hall. He concluded, “By the final chorus the entire hall was singing and dancing along. As I took my bow on stage, I decided that no matter what life throws at me, I can always roll with the punches.”

Starting at a very young age Aubrey Healer (West Hartford, Connecticut) self-performed nightly hormone injections to stimulate growth and height. She shared with the community how she grew in the process. “In addition to a few inches, increased emotional strength and perseverance were part of the payout,” she explained. “The nightly injections that became part of my life helped me to grow both physically and, more importantly, emotionally. To this day, I find it interesting that a minor hormonal deficiency affecting my height would be so directly related to measuring myself on a completely different kind of scale.”

The senior speaker series will resume on October 30. You may view all chapel talks here.