FAMILIAR FACES (8th edition)



^{Hello DWS Alumni from the 70's and 80's! Welcome to our eighth edition of Familiar Faces. With DWS alumni spanning the globe, we thought it would be fun for you to see what everyone is up to and to have the opportunity to re-connect with your DWS community.}

^{*Note: class years listed are for graduation of the 8th grade and the names following the year are the class teacher at the time of graduation.}

Marjorie Joy Masoud

Class Teacher | 1983-1999

Early August 1981 found me standing before the stately Duns Scotus Friary on Lahser Road in Southfield, Michigan. The Waldorf Institute of Mercy College of Detroit was housed within this lovely setting, and one needed only to step out the back door to delight in the scenic biodynamic gardens that beautified the land. Inside, in the quiet and peaceful setting, adorned with stained-glass windows, adults from all reaches of North America, and from continents afar, were arriving to study Rudolf Steiner’s Waldorf pedagogy and philosophy.

My 8 year old son, Kaleo, and I arrived from Maui, Hawaii where he was born and flourished in the tropical beauty and warm island breezes and where he attended first grade at the Haleakala Waldorf School. We were in a very different setting now, more familiar to me, as I had grown up in Michigan.

Kaleo thrived at the DWS in Jerry Altwies’ class, while I studied for two years with some of the finest, experienced visiting Waldorf teachers from across the globe and with our resident instructors Werner Glas and Hans Gebert (the founders), Barbara Glas who instructed us in painting and drawing, Eve Olive fur Eurythmy blocks throughout the year, and Eve Hardie for clay modeling.

Lora Valsi and I co-taught in the Kindergarten during the 1983-84 school year and I took my first class the following year. The school was vibrant with experienced teachers (K-12th grade). Rashid made wonderful lunches in the cafeteria! The students were exuberant with health and vitality and with the inner joy and well-being that Waldorf education fosters.

I had the opportunity to “gift” each of my classes to John Trevillion, a teacher with expertise in the middle school curriculum who graduated all three of my wonderful classes after grade 8.

The 16 years at DWS were rich and truly inspiring! Three classes of talented, eager, bright-eyed students, who I had the joy of standing before each day. Enthusiastic parents and colleagues alike, and my dear husband who supported me along the way.

Life had a second calling for me in my role as an educator. With a Master’s degree in Special Education I embarked on another journey, in a different educational setting, with the desire to support the academic success of those students in the public school who were experiencing learning difficulties and who qualified for special education support.  

After 34 years in the field of education I retired, making room for another rich chapter in my life. There are so many wonderful things I can say about this time in my life now. I will say that the highlight is the possibility of special visits abroad, in any season, to enjoy life with Kaleo, Emma and our 4 beautiful grandchildren. A lovely chapter in my life!

James Rose

Class of 1974 | Theo Buergin

"Such a life"… written on May 26, 2022, my birthday

I knew my arm was broken as I walked home from school. With every step I took I could feel the bones in my left arm clanging together in the inside of my ears. Holding back the tears from my first encounter with a bully at Shultze Grade School in Detroit MI, I knew somehow my days at this school must end soon… I was often teased by boys in the neighborhood because they said I “talked white”. The day my arm was broken it was over the same issue the fact I “talked white”. I didn’t really understand what they were talking about, how would a seven-year-old boy know?? I just knew after my arm was broken over this, I would be leaving that school soon. 

When I arrived home, I was greeted by my mother who would wait for me standing in the bay window of our beautiful home on West Outer Drive on Detroit’s Northwest Side. During the middle 1960’s both the street and the neighborhood were populated by many well-educated elite black families and by grace we were one of those families. My mother immediately jumped into action and took me to Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital Emergency Room where I was outfitted with what became a ‘badge of honor’ amongst my boyhood friends in the neighborhood—boys are a strange bunch…

Because of a close personal relationship with Juanita Thompson, my mother Carole Rose enrolled me into the first class at the Detroit Waldorf School in 1966. My armed healed, I began a journey into the most wonderful educational experience of my life. They often say Waldorf Education is a curative form of educating a child. Looking back, I can honestly say learning at Waldorf was the best education I ever received. I think it has to do with the depth of the education we received. I have often thought this way about Waldorf, “What was being taught to me was not the only thing that was there…”. In other words, there is both the physical and the spiritual nature of a subject and I know my teacher Theo Buergin strove daily to impart this depth of teaching to our class as did many of the teachers at the school.

Today as a grown man, father to seven children, grandfather to five children and great grandfather to one child, I am most richly blessed. I attribute so many of the blessings of my life to the investment and sacrifice my parents made to send me to the Detroit Waldorf School. To sum it up, being a Waldorf Person has instilled in me a deep curiosity which has allowed me to have a degree in French Horn Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, Opera Vocal Studies with George Shirley, executive business careers at IBM and Deloitte, a community leader serving on many Boards, travelled the world over and most important blessed with an extraordinary group of friends from Waldorf who are my people, who are my family. 

I can only look back on this birthday, be thankful and say with amazement, "Such a life... "

Michael Wilson

8th Grade Class of 1980 | Erica Geissner, Michael Blair, Alan MacNair 

HS Class of '83

Every day at work I confront despair, tragedy, and loss: this is the task I have accepted. Es ist meine Aufgabe. Sometimes, as I enter my professional world, I think of Niflheim; remember Norse Mythology? In this underworld, working at the roots of Yggdrasill, I seek answers. In my imagination, this is a heroic quest!

As Regional Supervising Coroner for Northwestern Ontario, I have responsibility over death investigations in a vast and sparsely populated region. More than half the Province, this is 525,000 square kilometers of mostly forests, lakes, rocks, and small and remote communities. For scale, this is larger than California but with only 250,000 inhabitants. A significant part of the population is made up of Indigenous Peoples whose ancestors have been here since time immemorial, a group that is over-represented among the deaths we investigate. The cultural and ethnic friction and the legacies of colonialism weigh heavily on us all.

The path to here was not a straight line. Nearly four decades ago, I left Detroit at age 18 after 14 years at DWS. (From 1979-1981 we lived in Michigan’s upper peninsula where I skipped ahead, missing the eight grade. It is clearly a testament to DWS academically that, after finishing the seventh grade I sat for a bunch of tests and was advised by the public school in the north, at age 13, to enter grade 11. Never in my life had I written a “test” like these ones!) I went into 9th grade in 1979. Back in Detroit in 1981, I graduated high school at DWS in 1983, intending to study engineering with a scholarship at U of M but felt that I had rushed things, so I deferred.

Well, one year off became two years, then three. I traveled, worked, and studied in Germany, Norway, France, Malaysia and finally Canada, where I attended McMaster University in Hamilton. Engineering, I set aside in favor of medicine. An undergraduate degree in Arts and Sciences (with major in Sociology) was followed by medical school which I finished at age 28 in 1994. Drawn northwards again, I completed my Residency in Northern Ontario in “Rural and Remote Medicine” in Thunder Bay where I met my wife, Janice. For 14 years, I had a varied medical practice in Nipigon, a small town on Lake Superior’s remote North Shore. On any given day, I might deliver a baby, comfort an elder in palliative care, resuscitate a patient in cardiac arrest, counsel a person in crisis, set a bone, stitch up a wound, treat an infection, manage diabetes. My work also involved death investigation which became my full-time occupation in 2010, when I accepted this opportunity to visit the underworld full-time. Seeing a bigger picture, I hoped to have an impact beyond the individual patients I encountered. Our office motto is “We Speak for the Dead to Protect the Living”.

How I was taught at the Detroit Waldorf School had a tremendous influence on how I now see my place in the world. Myths, the Arts, literature, music, movement, drama, philosophy, languages: all to me relate to processes of becoming. The end can never justify the means because end and means are completely intertwined. This philosophical lens, and the idea of becoming, or Werden, is my protection. The work demands that I remain open to new ideas, be competent and empathic, and flexible in relating to different people in crisis. An education through the Arts granted me that. I can’t imagine having these capacities without that foundation.

And beyond work? We have two adult children, Andrew and Natalie, now in university. I like to build things and maintain motorcycles, and other interests include sailing, skiing, cycling, triathlons, camping, canoeing, hiking, hunting, traveling. I live in a beautiful part of the world, on Lake Superior, with nature in my front (and back) yard.

I grew up in Detroit and it has been my good fortune to live in another Great Lake City: Thunder Bay, Ontario, with a similar mixture of promise, despair, hope, and tragedy, and racial (and other) tensions. Did my experiences in Detroit prepare me for my current undertaking, in part to bridge ethnic, cultural, racial divides? I believe the capacities developed, to thrive and prosper professionally in this difficult work, interact with many people of diverse backgrounds, and make the most of many opportunities, are a tribute in part to the Detroit Waldorf School. I remain grateful.

Verdict Explanation of an Inquest that I presided over.

** Views expressed here are my own and not those of the Ontario Government.

Photo captions:

1) On Lake Superior, in front of my home.

2) At my office, with map of the area I am responsible for, tags identify which communities I’ve visited.

3) With my wife Janice, Andrew and Natalie, December 2021.

4) At the remote Indigenous community of Weagamow Lake.

Anna Blau Zay

Class of 1985 | Alan MacNair

Since the day I began Fourth Grade at the Detroit Waldorf School, I have been thinking about or working with Waldorf education for my whole life. Those early years laid the foundation to engage creatively with people, history, and nature. I remember Mr. MacNair vividly, the original model of the ideal teacher that I would spend much of my life emulating as a history and humanities teacher, first at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, and now for over 20 years at Kimberton Waldorf School.

I left Detroit with my family after the high school closed in 1987 and finished high school at Hawthorne Valley, a vibrant rural Waldorf school. From there, I attended Haverford College, where I became involved in peace and justice studies. I think growing up in a truly integrated school like DWS has always helped me want to strive for a more harmonious and equitable society. After graduation from college, I joined VISTA/AmeriCorps as a volunteer working for a tribe in Nevada. Through my experiences there, I found my way back to Waldorf education and received my M.Ed. and teacher training from Antioch University/ The Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, NH. I have been teaching high school ever since. I love working with teenagers, who are in such a transformative stage of their lives and respond so deeply to the questions the world poses us historically and today. Kimberton has been a wonderful home both professionally and personally, allowing me to explore interests such as traveling to Japan after my selection to the 70th anniversary Peace and Justice trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sponsored by the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia and the Five College Center for East Asian Studies. I also served as Kimberton’s AWSNA delegate for a number of years, which included a visit to the national conference that was held at the Detroit Waldorf School several years ago. Walking into the auditorium brought back a rush of memories (it still smells the same as in 1985!).

In 2001, I married my husband Alexander, and our three children, Justin (20), Jeremy (18) and Julia (16) arrived in rapid succession. They all attended Kimberton from preschool through high school, and I continued to teach. We weathered the pandemic, though we all agreed that online school was not much fun. Suddenly, they are young adults at the end of their Waldorf high school careers, heading off to college, and the next life phase begins. Luckily, as a result of my husband’s and my own Waldorf educations, we both have interests and capacities that continue to develop and compel us on to new efforts and projects. I have been painting a lot, and the garden beckons. We are both so grateful for the Waldorf communities that have sustained us all these years, and for the resilience and creativity that our schooling gave us, and which we have been able to give our children as well.

Photo caption: My husband Alexander, Julia our exchange student, and our children Emma, Justin, and Jeremy.

Remembering Betty Kaye Martin

Kindergarten and Woodworking teacher, 1969-1976

By Jerry Altwies:

I remember Betty Kaye as always having a smile and a chuckle ready to share. I can imagine that her love of teaching in a Waldorf kindergarten was fueled by her enthusiasm for all things artistic. She drove a beautiful, blue Corvette and on occasion would wear her matching color leather pants and jacket ensemble.

Betty Kaye once said she would have given Kristine an A in sandbox if Waldorf gave grade marks. She also had us worried once - we were at this time very new to all things Waldorfian - when she simply commented at a teacher-parent evening that Kristine's water color paintings were very pale. Horrors, what did this indicate and what remedial psycho-spiritual tactic was immediately needed to remedy the situation?

The trio of Waldorf kindergarten teachers at that time, Ella Baker, Irene Robson and Betty Kaye were as delightful as they were varied in their teaching styles and what they offered to the children. It was a paradise for them.

By James Rose:

On the first day of my 4th grade year, we were standing in the schoolyard when we heard the sound of a sports car approach the school. We all loved cool cars because living in Detroit cars were our thing. This car was different, and it attracted our attention as did the small petite woman inside. I will never forget the moment that blue Sunbeam Tiger came to a dynamic halt in front of the school and out jumped Betty Kaye wearing a cowboy hat, a light blue jumpsuit, cowboy boots and a brown crocodile leather shoulder bag. She wore so much jewelry around her arms you could hear the gold and silver ringing as she walked from quite a distance away. She walked with flair and had a confident gate that exuded joy. We paused and stared in complete silence.

Do you know other alums who might like to join this group?

Can we feature you in an upcoming edition? 

Contact: Claudia Valsi, DWS Alumni Outreach Volunteer Coordinator