Our Wall of Fame Teacher Teaching at 95: Evelyn Siegel and Sixty and Better on Campus

When we started talking about getting “Beyond the Berm” in 2016, we were clear that we did not mean to be creating a simple one-way path. We wanted to be sharing our campus inside the berm with community members who were otherwise only seeing the outside of our berm. When Evelyn Siegel H’99 brought a group of retirees to our ceramics studio for a lesson with Upper School Ceramics Teacher Jerry Mahle, I loved that some of these visitors had never set foot on our campus. I loved getting to share some School history with them, while also seeing them at work in the truly remarkable space that is our ceramics studio.

That the ambassador for this visit was Evelyn made the visit all the more special. Mrs. Siegel came to the School as our first Fine Arts Director, hired by Peter Schwartz H’98 in 1967. She stayed until 1984, building our reputation as a school that focused on the visual and performing arts, nurturing both artists and audiences. Evelyn is one of just nine people on the School’s Wall of Fame, an honor we bestowed on her in my first year at FWCD (2015). 

From that introduction to Evelyn as a passionate educator and ever-engaged learner, I have always looked forward to the next opportunity to be in her company. FWCD was formed by a group of Founders with great ideas and with the initiative to see those ideas through. And, FWCD is a school of significance today because of the people who took up those Founders’ ideas and made them realities. Evelyn Siegel is one of those amazing educators and, at 95, she continues to find ways to make us better. Our hosting of the Sixty and Better introduction to ceramics was a gift to the retirees and to the School.