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Walter Stahr

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November Events

October 26, 2017 by Walter Stahr

As you can see from the events page, I have a number of events coming up in November, almost two weeks on the East Coast.

And these events are going to require different talks.  The Lincoln Group of New York will naturally want to hear about Lincoln and Stanton.  The Wheeling Public Library calls for a talk about Stanton and the Wheeling Bridge.  In Stanton’s home town of Steubenville I will want to talk about his deep lifelong relations with that town.  And in Exeter, where we have so many friends, well that will be more personal I think.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Stanton

Boise Mock Trial Nationals

May 15, 2016 by Walter Stahr

I am in the Boise airport, waiting to board my flight home to California, after attending high school mock trial nationals with the Phillips Exeter mock trial team, which I coach.

I am, I must confess, tired and disappointed.  You are not sure, as the weekend progress, how you have done, but we thought by the end of yesterday that we had won three trials and lost one.  It turned out, when the results were released this morning, that we won only one trial and lost three.  So instead of being, as we hoped, something like tenth in the nation, we were thirty-fourth.  Disappointing.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Mock Trial

Mock Trial

February 8, 2016 by Walter Stahr

The Phillips Exeter mock trial team has won the New Hampshire state championship; the team will compete at nationals for the fourth time in five years.

This year was different, very different, because I live in California not New Hampshire.  So I was not able to work with the Exeter students in person, only by phone, email, text message, Skype sessions.  It was not easy:  some times I could not reach them or they could not reach me, sometimes the connection would drop or the voices would garble.  But they worked away to read and master the case, an aggravated assault charge against a teenager, arising out of a knife pulled at a graduation party.  The students held tryouts and formed three teams, A team, B team, and C team, each with about ten students.  I focused almost all my energy on A team, hoping they would win and go on to nationals.  I spent a bit of time with B team and no time with C team.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Mock Trial

Not from here

June 20, 2014 by Walter Stahr

I am in California, no longer a resident of New Hampshire, not quite a resident of California yet.  I have been thinking a lot about place recently, about how I am never quite in one place.  I never seem to be “from here.”

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as my father started law school there at Harvard.  But before I was one year old I was here in California for a few weeks; my father was still in the naval reserve, so when he went off for his summer of service, my mother flew here with me.  The next summer (I do not remember any of this) we spent in Cleveland, Ohio.  And the following summer (1960) we moved to Arcadia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Travel

Exeter Graduation

June 9, 2014 by Walter Stahr

Yesterday was graduation day here at the Phillips Exeter Academy.  A wonderful, emotional, difficult day.

It was a beautiful, sunny day here, and graduation was held on the lawn in front of the main academy building, where the dog Sunny and I have walked so many times.  My daughter Lydia—intelligent, beautiful, poised, gracious—was among the 318 students who received their diplomas from Principal Hassan.  Lydia graduated with honor, a member of the Cum Laude society, the students with the highest cumulative grades.  My wife Masami and I had many of the customary emotions of parents at high school graduation.  “When did she get to be a beauty?  When did he grow to be so tall?  Wasn’t it yesterday that they were small?”

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Filed Under: Exeter, Mock Trial

Mock Trial Nationals

May 12, 2014 by Walter Stahr

I have just returned from the national high school mock trial championship, held this year in Madison, Wisconsin.  It was an exciting, exhausting, and in the end somewhat disappointing weekend.

Most of us traveled Wednesday, arriving in Madison after nine that night.  The next morning, at nine, we had our first scrimmage, against a solid team from Jonesboro High in Georgia.  We have a team connection to Jonesboro High:  our state coordinator, the great Kyle Skinner, competed for Jonesboro when he was in high school.  Competed at the highest level, winning the national championship one year.  This year’s Georgia team was not that good, but they were good, with some interesting ideas.  For example, the first words of the Georgia defense opening were “Occam’s Razor.”  We had considered, briefly, using the very same phrase as our defense opening, but rejected it because we thought it too obscure, too erudite. 

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Filed Under: Exeter, Mock Trial

Exeter Students

April 14, 2014 by Walter Stahr

Knowing that I will be in California next school year, knowing that this is probably our last school year here at Phillips Exeter, makes me appreciate Exeter more.  Yes the weather is bad, although today is a lovely warm spring day.  Yes, we live in a small dormitory apartment, and can hear kids at all hours in the corridors.  But the students, especially my mock trial students, are great.

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Filed Under: Exeter

Mock Trial Victory

February 18, 2014 by Walter Stahr

Phillips Exeter has once again won the NH state championship; we are once again headed to the national championships.  I cannot claim to be surprised–we were the favorites heading into this weekend’s state competition–but I am so pleased.

 

In December, we formed three teams for the state championship; an A team composed mainly of experienced seniors and uppers; a B team with some strong lowers and preps; and a C team, also of lowers and preps.  The case, originally from Georgia, was a murder at sea; two men went out shrimp fishing, the boat went down, one of them, Sam, was picked from the sea, and the other, Jude, washed up on the beach, with stab wounds matching Sam’s knife.  We assigned roles–who was going to be Sam, who was going to be the police detective–and we went to work.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Mock Trial

Donald B. Cole

November 10, 2013 by Walter Stahr

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for my history teacher and mentor, Donald Barnard Cole.  It was a wonderful service, filled with music and laughter, stories and tears.  I learned a great deal about Mr. Cole, and thought I would share here some of my own memories of him.

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Filed Under: blog, Exeter, Research, Seward

Skeptical Biographer

October 28, 2013 by Walter Stahr

One of the great reasons to live where we do is the Phillips Exeter Academy Library.  I can WALK to the library, indeed when I walk our dog Sunny, we generally walk to the library and back, just to enjoy the view from there of the Academy Building.  I have been known to tie Sunny up outside and just pop in to check something.

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Filed Under: Exeter, Research, Stanton

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