Convocation 2026: Tradition with a Twist
Millbrook’s 96th school year began as usual, with the time-honored tradition of Convocation on the first Thursday of the fall semester. Students lined up by form to process through the flags of every nation represented in the student body this year and into Flagler Memorial Chapel as the school’s bagpiper William G. Moriarty scored the scene. And while the order of the service remained unchanged, with its invocation, special address, school song, and benediction, Head of School Jonathan Downs ’98 introduced a new wrinkle that he’d been pondering since last year’s Convocation:
“For the past 35 years, the head of school was tasked with professing from this pulpit, which is a tradition that I want to change today,” he declared. “Last year while I was sitting here watching fellow members of our faculty process into the chapel, I was excited to see Mr. [Lewis] Feuer come back from his sabbatical, a year off campus practicing yoga and surfing, and I thought to myself at that moment he should be up here.”
Mr. Downs gave Mr. Feuer a platform to share insights from his sabbatical with the community later that year at the academic awards ceremony. This year Director of Counseling Billy Thom returned from sabbatical, so Mr. Downs invited him to connect his time of reflection and growth away from Millbrook to this year’s core value of service.
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In addition to spending quality time with family and friends, Mr. Thom had spent his sabbatical practicing intense meditation, traveling across the country to various conferences, counseling private clients—and watching the New York Knicks win the NBA Finals. His message to students was that to effectively serve others, you must first love yourself.
“Loving yourself does not mean being unwounded or unbroken. It means growing more and more at home with yourself,” he said. “Loving yourself doesn't just mean being comfortable. It means looking at every part of yourself with love and curiosity. And when you can look at yourself with curious tenderness, even at the parts that you'd probably rather hide, that love doesn't stay contained. It can't. It floods. It gets on everyone around you.”
With that message percolating in their hearts, students and faculty headed to Casertano Hall to break bread together at Formal Dinner. The love indeed ran over as advisory groups shared a family-style meal seasoned with warm conversation and hearty laughter.
The evening reminded us that school traditions like Convocation and Formal Dinner are not perfunctory hoops that we leap through to start the year. They are the common threads running through the Millbrook experience, repeating like stitches to weave together the intricate fabric of this remarkable community.
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