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. He moved to Northern California for college, then lived in France, Hungary, and New York before settling in Los Angeles. Yet his journeys always reminded him, in one way or another, of his time at St. Mark's.
“I didn’t really appreciate the teachers and their ways until after the fact,” Osborn says. “Getting away from St. Mark's for a couple of years, I realized how much the School did to prepare me for life after high school. I learned to better organize my time, and the transition to college, where there was much more freedom, wasn’t such a challenge. I also came away with some of the best friends I have in life.”
Osborn recalls a time travelling to southern France when he bumped into a fellow St. Marker who was a year ahead of him. They spent an entire plane ride reminiscing about classmates and their families.
“You get to know each other at St. Mark's in a way that you don’t when you go to college, even if it's a small liberal arts college; there’s a kind of tightness, where you really get to know people really well,” Osborn explains. “It’s why I continue to support St. Mark's. I want more people to experience the small, tight-knit community I did.”
He also wants students to have experiences that teach them to interact with others and be more aware of the world around them, traits he believes St. Mark's developed in him. As a student, he mentored others who were learning in an economically disadvantaged Boston community, which opened his eyes to how few opportunities others could have. Currently, he says he doesn’t have to walk too far in Los Angeles without seeing people living in tents—another sign of how fortunate he is. It’s experiences like these that remind Osborn of the School’s underlying mission to help students appreciate what they have and then give back by helping others.
Osborn does this by volunteering with iMentor, which helps youth in low-income communities graduate high school and prepare for college. This work allows him to not only help others achieve the opportunities he had, but also pass along the influences of a St. Mark's education that continue to resonate through his life.