Run and Find Out

Katye Russell
Karen Ward Knox '66 reflects on her years with PDS and USN.

By Katye Russell
As a 1966 alumna of PDS, parent of two USN alumni (sons Hillary ‘93 and Mallory ‘94), and a teacher here for more than 25 years, Karen Ward Knox has the honor of belonging to a very exclusive club.  Dee Holder Hicks (PDS ’58) actually has Karen beat by adding a fourth role as grandmother to 7th grader Addison Pritchard and 6th grader Leah Hicks, but no other PDS or USN alumnus or alumna can boast all three.

Karen notes that something  the school has always done well is teach students how to think critically and to write well.  “I’m certainly a beneficiary of that,” she says, “and that holds true for my children and certainly for the alumni with whom I’m still in contact.”  Karen’s alumni contacts include friends from the class of ’66, but also more recent graduates.  “The connection to this place is strong, so they come back to show off their spouses and babies, to share news about jobs and degrees,” and often, also, to say thank you.

Karen shares their sense of gratitude.  “Coming here was,” she says, “like opening a treasure box. …My high school years were an unalloyed pleasure and delight.”   Although her parents valued talk of books, music, and ideas, until PDS Karen had never met anyone her own age who would understand the phrase ‘the life of the mind.’  “To come here in 1962, where everybody felt that way was just brilliant,” she says. 

Karen sees this enjoyment of intellectualism and idiosyncrasy as one the most significant legacies from PDS to USN.  “The family connections and the lingering influence of ideas means that the life of the mind will never be absent from USN.”  

While the press of modern life allows them less time for reflection, Karen loves that her students still arrive full of insatiable curiosity.   As her own teachers did so many years ago, Karen tells them, “like the Elephant’s Child, to run and find out.”

That so many alumni, like Karen herself, run back to share what they’ve learned underscores the spirit of commitment that continued when  PDS became USN in 1975.  “We came together and said ‘we cannot let this disappear’ and I’m so thankful that they didn’t, that we didn’t…. The footprint has changed,” says Karen, “but in most ways, the school is still the same, and I really like to see that.”
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