“Be as Curious as You Can”: Head of School Charley Stillwell’s Opening Chapel Talk

Good evening, and welcome back! It has been so exciting to have everyone here during these past few days, and I look forward to a fantastic year ahead. I appreciate everyone who has worked so hard to help us get the school year off to such a smooth start.
 
As I begin each year, I love to think about different goals that we can all work on together that can help the year be even more terrific for everyone. This summer, I have been thinking a great deal about how curiosity and an effort by all of us to expand and strengthen our relationships here could take this year to new heights and help us thrive as a community. I love the fact that we come from all across the country and all around the world. When I look out at all of you, I see an incredible collection of individual stories. This room is filled with such a rich, fascinating assortment of experiences and interests in topics from food to music to different activities and current issues. My guess is that for our returning students and our faculty there are a number of these stories in this room that you know well and also so many others that you have only just begun to learn or have not yet had a chance to learn. For our new students, there are so many possible stories in this room for you to explore this year.
 
For me this is where curiosity comes into play … There was an interesting moment about 12 years ago in Richmond, Va., where I headed another school, when a very unusual billboard appeared on the main highway through downtown. This billboard shared an anonymous message with only words that read “Once you’ve heard their story, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love. Ask someone their story today.” This message was a real mystery, and the newspaper later learned that a local therapist actually purchased the right to have the sign put up as a birthday present to herself. She knew this statement to be true as someone who listened to people’s lives everyday. 
 
I found the sign and its message to be so simple and so powerful. We live in a time when people often focus on differences rather than those things we share in common and too often we find comfort in grouping people into “us” and “them.” Even here it can happen with people on two different teams or two different dorms or two different grade levels. It can be so much easier and safer to be curious about those in the “us” group, and we can get caught up in biased perceptions and group labels about the people in the “them” group. 
 
I love that this sign asks us to do an easy and simple thing: to ask someone their story today and to be curious that their answer might open the door to a meaningful relationship. There is so much to be gained. First, people feel great and are more confident and comfortable when they learn that others around them are genuinely interested in their story. It makes us all feel appreciated and a more significant part of the community.
 
Secondly, we can learn so much from these stories about the neat things that we share in common and the intriguing things that make us different. One great example of this type of learning relationship is one that developed between two professors at Princeton just after I was there: Dr. Robert P. George and Dr. Cornel West. Dr. George came to Princeton in 1985 as a conservative Catholic and a legal scholar and political philosopher who led the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Politics Department from a conservative point of view. Dr. George met Cornel West when Dr. West arrived in 1988 as a well-known liberal, progressive philosopher, theologian, political activist, and social critic who became a professor of religion and director of Princeton’s program in African American Studies. These two men had an amazing array of differences on the surface, but they were curious about each other’s story. They also shared a passion for seeking the truth and the humble notion that we can only come closer to understanding the truth by seeking to understand the perspectives of those with whom we disagree. They developed an amazing bond and shared respect for each other and their intellectual prowess and have loved arguing with each other and learning from each other ever since. 
 
A final benefit from being curious not just about those in the “us” group but those in the “them” group is that more times than not you discover wonderful, unlikely friendships — friendships we might miss if we don’t push ourselves out of our comfort zone. I learned about an amazing unlikely friendship between two individuals pushing beyond their comfort zone this summer when reading a book about World War II. Max Gendleman was a young infantry officer from Milwaukee. His family had emigrated to the U.S. from Russia beginning in 1912 to escape the persecution of Jews in his ancestral home. In the very brutal Battle of the Bulge towards the end of the war in December of 1944, Max’s unit was almost completely wiped out, and he was taken prisoner. His German captors did not know that he was Jewish. As the Germans continued to lose the war in the first months of 1945, Max tried unsuccessfully to escape from two different prison camps before being sent to a prison just east of where the US army had halted its invasion at the Elbe River and where the Russian army was soon to invade. As Max began to consider how to attempt a third escape, he would walk along the barbed wire fence at the camp each day. Just outside the fence there was a small German farm, and Max would see a young, injured German air force pilot working in the field. For a few days they acknowledged each other with head nods until finally one day the German soldier, Karl Kirshner, said hello. The two began to speak with each other (Karl knew English) and eventually Karl asked Max if he wanted to come over after dark to play chess. Karl knew he could pull up the fence just enough for Max to crawl under. 
 
The two soldiers began to play chess at night and Karl’s grandmother would feed Max. Imagine how hard it may have been for these two to trust each other and be comfortable with each other, and yet they soon began to share their stories. Karl explained that he had become disenchanted with the Nazi Party and the war effort and that he was worried. The Russian army was closing in on the prison camp and his family farm, and he heard that German soldiers captured by the Russians were often killed. Max then shared his story and explained that he was Jewish and worried that the prison camp guards would kill him if they knew and also kill him if the war came to an end. Despite their differences, they decided to help each other. Karl found clothes and had some papers pulled together for identification, and he and Max escaped the Germans and the Russians together one night. Karl helped Max get through a German military checkpoint, and Max helped Karl be welcomed by US troops and taken to be questioned for military information before being released. Ultimately Max went home to Milwaukee, and Karl studied medicine in Germany before moving to the US where he became a life-long close family friend of the Gendlemans.
 
Now just as the curiosity of these Princeton professors and these two soldiers pushed them beyond the “us-them” divide, as we move forward in the year ahead, I do hope that you will be as curious as you can about everyone here and that you find ways to share your stories and build these relationships that can lead you to a better understanding of the truth, help you overcome hardships, and make our community one based on love and respect. Just as Moses in our reading tonight had curiosity about the burning bush that led to his important new relationship with God and crucial leadership role, curiosity and relationships can position all of us to be our best selves and to have the best experience possible. 
 
So good luck this year. I hope it will be a wonderful year for all of you. God bless the High School.