How do you celebrate love? Here at The Winchendon School, we have stories to inspire you.
The Ultimate Winchendon School Love Story
After meeting and marrying his wife Travis, followed by a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in central Chile, the Shattucks found themselves back home in Jaffrey, NH. While Dan ambled around the Shattuck homestead, attending to one chore or another, Travis happened upon a serendipitous job listing in the local Monadnock Ledger for a science and Spanish teaching position at The Winchendon School. The rest is history!
Dan started teaching at TWS in the fall of 1965 and for 46 years touched the lives of all who encountered him and his good nature and astute knowledge of the natural world. At Winchendon, the Shattucks are living legends. On campus, The Shattuck Chemistry Laboratory, the Shattuck Victory Bell, and the Shattuck Sugar Bush are all symbols for how much the Shattucks mean to us.
Teaching, Coaching, and Love
Alex Magay started teaching and coaching at The Winchendon School in 1998. In 2004 while shoe shopping in Leominster, MA he met Raman Kaur who sold Alex a pair of Doc Martins. A week later Alex went back to the sa
me store and bought a second pair of shoes, and when she saw him walk in her shop, she predicted that he was going to ask her on a date and she was right.
In 2008 the couple was married on campus with many faculty and staff on hand for the celebration. The wedding was a big success due to the many hands that helped them that day with the event including Papa ’07 & Moumy ’09 Lo, Bob Harrington’s grandchildren and Michael ’09 & Carissa ’09 Leung (who years later would have their own wedding on campus).
Raman would later begin teaching ESL at The Winchendon School, and this is her eighth year working at TWS.
Papa ’07 & Moumy ’09 Lo
Papa came to The Winchendon School from Senegal mid-year during the 2005-06 school year and made an immediate impact in a basketball game against Brewster Academy his first week at School in a big win for the Winch. He managed the school store and was elected class president by his peers. After graduating in 2007, he chose UMass Amherst and later completed his degree in Mathematics at Bryant University. The next school year his high school sweetheart Moumy from Theis, Senegal transferred to TWS too and played for the girl’s basketball team.
They decided to get married while Moumy was a senior at TWS. I’m sure all of Moumy’s classmates will remember the celebration we had for them with Dajin Kim playing the piano. The LaBelles, students, faculty, and staff showered the newly married couple with gifts. The couple still cherishes the wedding book that the entire community signed.
Since their wedding day, the family has made a major impact on the entire Winchendon Community with Papa teaching math in the classroom, coaching the Varsity Basketball Team to their subtle impacts on the community with gregarious personalities and a great sense of humor. Their son Pathe and daughter Aminata round out Team Lo on campus.
Pies and Love
Faculty member Patrick Englehardt grew up in the state of Maine, but he met his college sweetheart Al
ix Always at Acadia University in Canada. They knew that they were meant for one another, but graduate school separated the two for a time. Then when Patrick joined The Winchendon School Science Department in 2016, the two could be together in Winchendon while Alix completed her degree in Boston. Besides his love for Alix, Patrick also loves their dog Juneau, Dinosaurs, Robots, showing off his outdoor skills and coaching possibly Winchendon School’s first Varsity Birdwatching Team in School history. What……?
The couple married on campus this past summer with most of the faculty and staff on hand as witnesses for their beautiful wedding celebration. We will never forget the huge collection of homemade pies made with Maine blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb and more that they opted for over a traditional wedding cake.
Finding Love On Campus
In 2004 Steve Giusti started teaching math at The Winchendon School after graduating from Boston College. One year later Steve met Erin Sanders in the parking lot of Merrill & Jaffe Dormitory the week before school started when she was moving into Jaffee as a new teacher in the math department. Soon after that Erin invited Steve over to Jaffee to watch the Red Sox play. Don’t worry AOD Pam Blair was on duty that night and checked in on them a couple of times. Their first official date was October 1, 2004. They got married in the summer of 2007 on Cape Cod. Bill & Bonnie LaBelle and many other faculty members attended the wedding!
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