October, 2008
Dear fellow Burke alum,
It’s been over three decades since BMA Coach Chris Jones compelled me to learn how to do a back flip, despite my protestations that this was a life skill I could do without and English teacher Richard Enemark instilled in me the bravery to face college, confident that I was a capable student. While I haven’t done a flip in quite some time, I can’t forget that there was once a coach who made me overcome my fear of having my feet over my head. And I am every day grateful for the remarkable teachers at BMA who set me on my life’s course. How my ski racing career turned out as a result of my days at Burke has proven truly inconsequential.
For me to be making a fundraising appeal to BMA alumni from this perspective may be a bit of heresy. But I make this claim with some confidence that all of you have gone on to lives that are full of challenges. And, like me, I suspect you’ve discovered that what we all did at Burke—dreaming the ski racing dream, training every day, juggling schoolwork and college applications with dishwashing duties and ski tuning every night, enjoying the camaraderie of peers who shared your goals and cheered you on—these experiences remain rich in our collective memory.
If you’re like me, somewhere along the road you’ve found that the willingness to work hard, along with the time management skills and self-reliance were all entirely transferable to whatever passion came next. The Burke experience echoes on in all of us.
What I see now, in my role as both a BMA trustee and a parent of a current Burke senior, is the delightful realization that Burke has gotten even better. It’s a school that’s turning out remarkable citizens who happen to be exceedingly fast on their skis. And while they’re mostly too young to imagine their lives after ski racing, they all have the passion and willingness to work hard and to support each other. Each Burkie today is part of a village of caring individuals who will make the world a better place in sixty different ways.
If you graduated back in my era, you don’t even want to know what it costs to send a kid to Burke in 2008 dollars. But here’s what you do need to know. Today, as in the past, there’s a significant gap between the tuition revenue and the actual per student cost. The gap in 2007-08 was $6600 per kid. To keep the school vital and competitive, to attract and maintain the very best staff, to insure that students who need scholarships will get a chance to dream the dream–for BMA to bridge that gap–your annual gift is vital.
So, give to keep Burke the very best ski academy in the country. Give for teachers and coaches who touched your lives. Give for the citizen you’ve become, for the passion you had and the way it still affects your life, wherever you’ve landed. Give because your dollars matter in a most profound way, every day at BMA. And give for the remarkable individuals that Burke keeps launching into the world, year after year.
Your tax-deductible donation can be made on line on the website or mail in to BMA. Thank you for your support.
Sincerely yours,
Kristin Hodgkins Macomber ’76
