A poem by Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again;” the 2005 Steve Jobs “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” commencement address at Stanford University; and a humorously ironic poem by Taylor Mali about speaking with conviction earned three boys the highest honors in the W.W.F. Public Speaking Contest finals held in Ward Hall on February 29.
Ninth grader Ethan Bondick won first prize for his strong presentation of the Hughes poem, his second win in two years; his classmate Tyler Arle was named first runner-up for an expressive recitation of the Jobs address; and eighth grader Arthur Goncalves earned second runner-up status for his effective delivery of the Mali poem.
Judging the competition, for which ten finalists had been selected by a faculty and staff panel, were Peter Folan, president of Catholic Memorial High School, a boys’ school in West Roxbury, MA; Sue Wurster, a speech coach and former Nashoba Brooks School faculty member; and Kwame Cobblah ’03, a former Fenn diversity intern and a current history teacher at The Pike School in Andover, MA. The judges said they had a difficult time selecting the top three presenters as the competitors were so strong, choosing pieces ranging from dramatic recitations of passages from Moby Dick and Shakespeare’s Henry V to “The Legend of Sam McGee,” a rousing poem/ballad that has a campfire storytelling flavor, and Nixon’s telephone conversation with the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969.
W.W. Fenn, as it is called, is the ultimate speaking contest at Fenn. It was established in 1946 and named for William Wallace Fenn, dean of the Harvard Divinity School and the father of the School’s founder, Roger Fenn. The contest takes place each February and involves all Middle and Upper School boys who are asked to commit to memory and declaim a poem, speech, or excerpts from a novel or play. They first compete in their classes during the contest trials, then boys from each class move onto the semi-finals, and ultimately the finalists deliver during an assembly in front of a trio of outside judges. The contest requires “a tremendous amount of courage,” Headmaster Jerry Ward says, and the empathetic support of the speakers’ peers in the audience.
The other finalists (all ten are pictured) were: Ishan Narra, Noah Wells, and Will Jevon (6th grade); Will Skelly and Brendan Regenauer (7th); and Ben Carbeau and Sam Farley (9th).