The first person in her family to attend college, Addie received a bachelor of arts degree in history at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, after spending her junior year studying history at Manchester College at Oxford University. She began her teaching career in Maryland in 1977, teaching courses at Annapolis Senior High School in the history of the United States, the Soviet Union, Latin America and the Middle East. She received a master of science degree in administration from Johns Hopkins University in 1982. In 1983 she moved with her first husband, Steve Esposito, to Ohio, where she continued teaching world history for four years. In between were a year spent in Rome studying ancient history and archaeology, the Italian language and Renaissance art, and her study for the master's degree in history, which she received from Kent State University in 1989. After moving to the Boston area she taught at Framingham South High School, where she chaired the social studies department for several years.

She came to Phillips Exeter to join the history department in the fall of 1991, teaching American history, modern Japanese and Chinese history, and African and Middle Eastern studies until a few months before her death on June 11, 2001. She was also the chair of the Martin Luther King Day Committee, the chair of the Junior Studies Program and adviser to the Tufts program in international relations known as EPIIC. She chaired a faculty Learning about Learning Committee that presaged some of our current curricular discussions, and served for several years on the Curriculum Committee. She was a dorm faculty member in Hoyt and Merrill and dorm head of Wheelwright Hall. She was also the adviser to the radio station for three years and coached club softball. Over the years she was awarded four NEH Summer Seminars for Secondary School Teachers and was a teacher and academic dean with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program for six summers.

At the time of her death, Addie received tributes from surprisingly diverse quarters. She touched the lives of students and alumni/ae, faculty and staff, families and children, as well as many dear friends whom she had known from outside Exeter, and who continued to visit and keep in touch.

Stories from her students had to be shortened quite a bit to be included here, but excerpts tell of her work at Exeter in a way that no one else can. Several noted her impact on their academic careers.

Evan Berenson '97 wrote, "Her passion for learning, for teaching, and for education was contagious. Ms. Aquilino made me feel that what I had to say was unique. In class she wanted to help us. She wanted to reach us. She wanted to make history a topic for today. She taught me not only lessons in the classroom, but influenced my personal life as well, encouraging and influencing me to want to learn more about my own past and my own religion. Her class on the conflicts of the Middle East sparked my interest in education and directly influenced me to become a political science major at Tufts."

Courtney Bass '99 wrote: "Coming to Exeter in the fall of 1996 was a big step for me. I remember how my friends and I would look forward to nights when the sweet smell of freshly baked goods would emanate from her open door. I often went to her with problems or just to chat. While her work in Merrill Hall and with the MLK Day Committee influenced and inspired me, it was her work as a teacher that has truly changed my life. African history with Ms. Aquilino was nothing like I expected it to be. I felt as if a new world had been opened to me. For the first time in my life I began to understand the 'dark' continent from which my ancestors came. On the days when we would have class before lunch my friends and I would continue our discussion straight through the lunch hour. I graduated from Exeter in the spring of 1999, excited and ready to begin my career at Harvard. I am now in my second year as an African history major and am lucky enough to be writing this letter from South Africa, where I am studying this semester. She helped me find my place in this field."

Some students spoke of her impact on their learning in ways they didn't fully understand at the time (and the significance of her cooking retains its place in the narrative). Wendy Caceres '99 remembers: "It was only after I returned from Japan this summer that I found out about Ms. Aquilino's passing. That night I felt I could almost taste the apple cake she used to make for check-in. I always felt that she made it especially for me. I was one of Ms. Aquilino's advisees for the four years I was in Merrill Hall. It was my first time away from home, and Exeter was so different from the way I had been raised. I have to admit, though, that since she was always strict about the rules during study hours I was slightly afraid of her at first. She was a formidable woman. I remember meeting her in her study with books everywhere, always with a student's paper in front of her or preparing her lesson for the next day. She was so dedicated to her work, to her students. I was also on the MLK Committee with her. She led us with such conviction and commitment. I was awed.

"I remember sitting in her study one day when I was mad about the way things were going in the dorm over a certain incident. I had sided with the majority of girls in the dorm; I had been caught up in their sadness and anger when they were turned in for disciplinary action, after plenty of warning, by another girl. When I expressed as much, Ms. Aquilino pointed out that history is full of people who had done just what that girl had done. People who had stood up for what was right even when everyone was going to turn on them. People in the tradition of Martin Luther King.

"It was a lesson she taught me when I did not want to be taught. Ms. Aquilino didn't do things because you wanted her to do them. She did them from a seemingly endless store of moral energy that is still a source of inspiration to me."

Addie helped to create informal and intensely lively communities among students that were both intellectual and social. Jay Sy '01 described it this way: "Adeline Aquilino died the day after my graduation. I like to think that she held on during those last hours to wish the seniors a true farewell. I was fortunate to know her as more than just a teacher. She advised EPIIC and the Middle Eastern Society, and I had the privilege of being in her Middle Eastern history class during fall term of our last year at Exeter. Ms. Aquilino's passion reached into everything she did, be it by fostering conversation between Arab and Jewish groups on campus or by cooking up a storm for a class dinner. From the time I spent with her inside and outside of the classroom, there is one truth that I know about her for sure: Ms. Aquilino did what she loved until the day she passed away."

Or as Iman Azzi '02 summed it up in the dedication to Addie in the spring supplement to the 2001 PEAN: "She made students feel they were all important members of a complicated global family."

The passion and dedication that her students saw in her were evident to her colleagues and friends as well, as were the many, many times she went out of her way to extend a helping hand, to bring people together, to offer a quiet word of support, or to enliven a lunch or dinner table with her extraordinary wit. She was a teacher first-always involved in curricular planning, interested in pedagogy, researching documents for a course, creating new assignments and syllabi, involved in summer study. In that and many other ways she was a bright thread in the fabric of Phillips Exeter, one that turned up over and over again in new patterns and designs.

Addie loved to create gatherings with exquisite food, and she involved people in all stages of preparation-the final determination of the recipes on the menu, the invitations, shopping, the chopping, the seating, the serving, the eating and the parceling out of the leftovers, which sometimes formed the occasion for a whole new gathering. A good many faculty and staff members took advantage of this latter stage of the Middle Eastern and African dinners that the students described above. She even took up the gardening of all kinds of vegetables one year with Cary Einhaus, and between the two of them it's likely that more comical stories flowed from that tiny plot of land and its predators that year than any other patch of tilled soil in the state of New Hampshire.

Addie was the master of storytelling, and there are many tales that survive her. Who hasn't heard the saga of her mistaking then-chair of the history department Bruce Pruitt's name as Pruitt Spruce in her initial telephone conversation with him? She concluded that such a peculiar-sounding name was simply another New England oddity, and had all her recommendations sent to Mr. Pruitt Spruce of the history department at Phillips Exeter Academy. There are probably not many of us who escaped being caricatured in a good-natured way or missed the chance to chuckle over her impersonations of our peculiarities. Bonnie Taylor herself would laugh until she cried when Addie assumed the soothing voice-like-butter that Bonnie used with so many parents and students and faculty for almost 30 years in the dean's office. Many faculty and staff members owe their friendships and acquaintances with other members of the community to gatherings that Addie hosted or was part of over the years. She overlooked the line between faculty, staff and administration and all were included as friends in her world. Jane Boesch, a member of the library staff who worked closely with Addie on Junior Studies, found herself, somewhat to her astonishment, accepting an invitation to try the ropes course with the preps and the rest of the Junior Studies faculty. As Jane later put it, "Addie was like a fresh breeze coming through."

There are many, many such stories about Addie-her taking aside a colleague to quietly offer help with child care when he was worried about his son, her remembering when a friend's mother was to have surgery, her invitation to go out for coffee when things seemed difficult or just for fun, her way of noticing and remembering children in the community and her frequent conversations with them. For many of those children, Addie began to define the community of adults beyond their families, and they would pick her out in the dining hall or on the paths as a trusted and favorite friend. To watch her face during those interactions was to watch someone who had entered the children's world, often to emerge with stories of their lives that their parents would treasure ever after.

In much the same way she illuminated other connections between people, parts of the community that we sometimes overlooked in our haste. Rex McGuinn spoke for many people when he said, "She filled my life with energy, enthusiasm and experiences that made me more aware and more curious about my world. And she made it possible for me to feel more connected not just to her, but to the friends she and I had in common. For someone like me who tends to float out in orbit alone all too often, I can't emphasize how important she was in my life." Many others spoke of Addie's capacity for bringing people together. She was a trustworthy presence-Mary Frances Dagostino noted that "when you told a secret to Addie, you knew it was in the vault." Her old friend Rosanna Warren said in a poem after Addie's death,

Our greatest strengths can cast their own shadows, and Addie was no exception. The fresh breeze occasionally turned to gale force when someone unwittingly crossed into sensitive territory, and it is a matter of sadness for some in our community that they remember the difficult moments more than they wish they did. But most recognize that Addie was also a person of tremendous heart, and in the end those are the stories that surround her memory.

The community rejoiced one winter when news of Addie's elopement with art instructor John Wharton '45 (Hon.), a matter about which there had been considerable speculation, spread across the campus. They were married in a tiny and top-secret ceremony in Jackie Thomas' office in the Academy Library on February 13, 1999. The wedding was so secret, in fact, that even David Thomas could not fathom why Jackie had canceled her weekly doubles game that Sunday afternoon.

Devastatingly, the ceremony was followed five days later by Addie's diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. She lived for two and a half years with stark medical prospects. Her courage and continued high spirits during that period, which she often described as the happiest and most terrifying of her life, were remarkable. There could not have been a more steadfast partner for Addie during those times than John. Between surgeries and treatments and continued teaching they traveled out West, through the South, to the coast of Maine and elsewhere in New England. When Addie felt weary or worried she would often go just to sit in the reference room or periodicals room of the Academy Library, which she and John loved. When she felt well they continued to have people over and were often in the dining hall together as well, absorbing the sights and sounds and people, with Addie enlivening dinner tables almost as much as ever.

Once the conversation turned to the prospect of turning 50. Some at the table had passed this milestone and others bewailed its impending arrival. Addie was uncharacteristically sober for a moment, then said, "I really hope to see my 50th birthday." She did not-it was just a few days ago, on Saturday, January 19. Her comment was a reminder to all of us that life is more unexpectedly fragile than we usually know. The way she lived was an occasion for gratitude. She was a wonderful scholar and a teacher, a friend and confidant. There are indeed times when we listen for her still.

Addie's ashes were scattered from the summit of Argon Tower in Arches National Park, UT, on September 29, 2001, by Josh Wharton '97 and Matt Littlefield. It was a place Addie had seen and fallen in love with for the first time on a trip with John. The inscription that went with her read, "Rest in peace on the wings of the wind." That is our wish for her as well.

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