Inspiring Stories

I'm from Los Angeles and always had a tough time at schools there.  One day, my school counselor, who had taught at a boarding school back east, suggested I look into them. It sounded mean, but she was actually being nice.

When I visited the School, I felt comfortable. Brinley Hall, the Admission director at the time, and the guys I stayed with overnight, all made me feel comfortable. It was a gut feeling that I didn’t have at any other school.

Osborn Curry ’87 may have travelled far and wide after leaving St. Mark's but he never felt the School, with its memories and lessons, was very far behind.

Living a life of consequence wasn’t an obligation for Olivia Hilton ’79, but rather a calling. In fact, most of Olivia’s life since graduating from St. Mark's, and then Wellesley College in 1983, has focused on serving others.

I had often heard about St. Mark's from my father who was in the Class of 1938. He went on to a career as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and was frequently posted overseas. He and my mother had always assumed they would send me to a boarding school in the U.S. for high school.

I first visited St. Mark's when we dropped off my brother John ’57 in the early ’50s to enter as a First Former. I was only five, but it made a big impression on me.

My brother had gone to St. Mark's. He was in the Class of ’59. When someone asked my dad where I was going to boarding school, he said, “St. Mark's.” 

When reflecting on his St. Mark’s experience, it was initially, and has been ever since, all about the relationships for David Scudder ’53.

I was your classic at-risk kid. I grew up in the government housing projects in Washington DC, later moving to the Maryland suburbs and going from “lower” lower class to “middle” lower class. One of the prized jobs for a teenager back then was to be a paperboy and with hard work and patience, my brother and I eventually hit it big time delivering for the Washington Post – the most expensive of the papers and the most lucrative for paperboys.