Since I last wrote, I awoke one day to the news that Barry Benepe ’46, who founded the New York City Greenmarkets in 1976, had died. I had met him a few times over my 35 years of association with St. Andrew’s, and I mention him to you because in so many ways his work exemplifies what a St. Andrew’s education is for. Barry lived an incredible life, one of great meaning and purpose, seasoned with great good cheer and curiosity about the people around him, and how he could make it all better.

Recently, another alumnus told me that what he learned at St. Andrew’s, when all was said and done, was that he could walk into any room and help untangle any challenge. St. Andrew’s provided him with a toolkit of analytical capability, communication skills, and teamwork, and paired that with a care for people and an understanding of how groups could work together to face, and conquer, novel challenges. I reflected that perhaps this was a way of understanding our motto, “faith and learning,” and it is certainly part of the story of Barry’s life impact on his beloved New York City and the farms and environment surrounding it.

But perhaps most of all, Barry was motivated by people. This comes across in a mesmerizing profile in the spring 2007 St. Andrew’s Magazine, where clearly we see a man who understood politics, city planning, architecture, economics, and budgets, and who marshaled that understanding in the service of bringing people together to meet their basic needs, yes, but also spiritual ones. People buy produce at the markets, of course, but they might also glimpse what is beautiful and true. His insight that the markets were a way to bring people together, people who otherwise might never encounter each other, reflects the enduring value of face-to-face human interaction. This is true in our own campus and the environment we seek to cultivate here at St. Andrew’s, where these frequent and sustained encounters with others make us stronger thinkers and happier humans.

As we conclude our celebrations of Earth Day and enter the month of May, a time of beginnings and endings, I will think often of Barry and his well-lived life and imagine what your children will do over the next 80 years when they leave this school. The world is a very different place than it was in 1946, when Barry Benepe graduated from St. Andrew’s, but I know their journeys, too, will be marked by their brilliance, their impact on others, and their courageous humanity.