The Start of Something Great

Summers on The Point are truly special. There’s no better place to be. Cool breezes float up from the waterfront, across Marrion Field, and through the main campus, making even the hottest days bearable. The lake, seen from almost every path on campus, invites one to embark on any number of classic pursuits—fishing, boating, and of course swimming; Cardigan’s athletic fields and wooded trails provide ample space as well for limitless games and adventures. 

But if you talk to alumni of Summer Session, they will tell you that the program provides more than just fun. They will tell you about the life lessons they still remember decades later and the passions they continue to pursue that were first sparked during Summer Session. With help from the dedicated and enthusiastic faculty who return every summer to help and encourage them, Summer Session students build confidence, independence, and friendships that last a lifetime.

But don’t take our word for it. Join us in reading stories from Summer Session alumni from every decade for the past 75 years, and counting!

Mr. Brad Yaggy, the director of the summer program [from 1963-1965], became a mentor. After Cardigan, I went on to Mercersburg Academy, where Mr. Yaggy, as well as my father, had gone. I took a slower route to completing my undergraduate degree (eight years), but by 1976, Brad Yaggy had become the headmaster of Friends Academy in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and he put me to work as a teacher and school counselor. For that I will always be indebted. I went on to school leadership, and I believe that it all started in the summer at Cardigan.  – Ed Rossmoore ’64, SS’62

I just remember the diversity of students. I was from a homogeneous southern town and loved meeting so many people from different backgrounds and cultures. After college, I moved to Los Angeles and never looked back. – Corey Silverstein Cosby SS’84

A summer school visiting faculty member gave a talk down at faculty beach. He handed out pieces of soap and said to keep them in our sock drawers; someday, he said, it would help us remember this time. I just found that piece of soap again, and boy did the memories come flying back, 50 years later. – Kirk Franklin ’78, P’10,’13, SS’75,’76 

As a kid who moved around a lot, Cardigan Summer Session was my constant and steady place. I was lucky enough to have friends who came back every year that I did, so it was incredible to grow up together every summer. Cardigan certainly impacted my life as I went to boarding school and then returned to Summer Session for my first teaching job. I currently work at Kimball Union Academy—teaching history, residing in a dorm, and coaching. I also met my husband while we were both teaching at Summer Session! – Tai (Haluszka) Rivellini SS’97-’01, Summer Faculty 2012-2019

“I grew up in Manhattan,” says Zeno Dancanet SS’16-19. “I was a city kid. I was very much of the mindset that in the United States, there was New York, and then there was not New York. Everybody who grows up there has to break out of that mindset eventually.” For Zeno, Cardigan’s Summer Session was the catalyst. Since then, he has visited 49 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces. He has plans to visit the rest this summer. “Cardigan showed me how diverse the world is,” he says. “I became addicted to learning people’s perspectives, and it drove me to become more empathetic.” 

Zeno was lucky enough to attend Summer Session for four years, returning to The Point each year to reconnect with the students who became his close friends and the faculty who knew him well. “I thought the faculty were impressive, personally; after a year and so many kids to look after, they still remembered individual faces,” he reflects. “They already knew me. And Cardigan had so much variety, so many activities, there was never a point when I got bored. There was always something new that I could learn.”

In his last year in the program, Zeno participated in the leadership program. “I blame, in the best way, that leadership role for me enjoying a lot of outreach in this stage of life,” says Zeno, who is currently a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and has plans to stay an additional year to pursue a master’s in electrical engineering. “I led UPenn’s rocketry team and mentored the youngest incoming freshmen on how to use CAD programs, the basics of rocketry design. I loved it. I don’t think I would have had that experience if it had not been for Cardigan’s leadership program.”

When Peter Darbee SS’64 was in fifth grade, his teacher explained to his mother that she needed to lower her expectations of her son as she believed he would likely never amount to anything. “Many thought I was a dope. Some bullied me,” he recalls. “I failed with regularity whether it was in school or in athletics. I hardly thought I was in control of my destiny.”

That changed when Peter’s mother enrolled him in a new school that had one condition for his admittance: he must attend Cardigan Summer Session. In the summer of 1964, Peter arrived at Cardigan and remembers, “I was smart enough not to cry about it but my attitude had not changed.”

And while he never really warmed up to the morning classes, the afternoon activities piqued his interest, particularly sailing and riflery. “Sailing gave me the opportunity to break out of this cycle,” he says. “I loved being out in the sun, in the wind, and on the water. About a third of the way through the summer, I stopped hating the school and ultimately came to love it. Cardigan Mountain was the critical catalyst at precisely the right time to facilitate an unbelievable turnaround.” While he was not immediately a star student, Peter took his modicum of success from Cardigan and slowly improved, attending Buckley Country Day School, Friends Academy, and eventually Dartmouth College, graduating Magna Cum Laude and with distinction in economics.

Peter recalls the lessons that kept him going: “I learned that I loved winning and being respected. I also learned that I had to work hard, much harder than others if I wanted to succeed. I did this over and over with substantial success. I also learned that I would fail from time to time. I learned to slough it off and try again harder.” 

Following 35 years of success in business, Peter retired to Florida. He continues to sail—even at one point attempting a circumnavigation of the world—and hasn’t given up his determination to work hard in the face of failure. “These days,” he reports, “I am trying to master sporting clay shooting. For several years I have been low gun in my weekly foursome; however, year by year and month by month, I am closing on them.”

“I’d never been to New Hampshire,” recalls Grace Wynter SS’08-13. “The idea of driving five hours felt incredibly long. It felt like a whole other world.” But despite the difference in geography, Grace quickly adapted and embraced all that Summer Session had to offer. She took classes in creative writing, drama, forensic science, and natural science. She remembers hiking, kayaking, and picking blueberries. By her third summer, she was helping out with the annual publication, also called the Chronicle. 

“I felt ownership of the project and it gave me reason to keep going back each summer,” she says. “One year, one of the faculty leaders of the Chronicle gave all of us a gift at the end of the summer, which was a little red notebook called The Designer Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom, and it was all about fonts and kerning and all these abstract things that I had never really thought about concretely. But I treasure that book. I still have it.”

Grace also remembers the clear moral imperative that was laid out each summer. “Mr. Kreuzburg would get up and talk about citizenship and stewardship a lot,” she remembers. “I always went to large public schools, and so most messages were delivered via screaming into a microphone. But at Summer Session the approach was always like, ‘What do you want out of the people around you? How can you facilitate that?’ ”

This article was originally published in the fall/winter 2025-2026 issue of the Cardigan Chronicle