‘The World Is Our Hometown,’ Students Say

Olney Friends School is 7,337 miles from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 7,490 miles from Beijing, China and 237 miles from Columbia, Maryland. We’re 2,039 miles from Monteverde, Costa Rica. When students come to Olney, they quickly begin to understand the planet in a different way. A girl from Serbia rooms with a girl from Texas. A boy from South Korea rooms with a boy from Canada who was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. The questions about how the globe is built don’t stop in the dorms. In Humanities classes, students study the geography of Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States, and Spanish classes learn Central and South America. Jun Young Kim ‘11 from GoYang, South Korea (6,823 miles) says learning the geography of the world helps him feel connected to other students. “When people say where they’re from and you know where that is, you feel closer to each other. Like you can know each other better.”

When Jerry King moved from Mansfield, Ohio (133 miles) to teach music at Olney in the fall of 2010, he quickly saw how this place became a new kind of home to its students and faculty from all over the world, and in that home everyone was building a family. Then he read about the upcoming Pumpkin Festival, a September tradition in Barnesville for almost 50 years. He recognized “that for Barnesville, the Pumpkin Festival is a homecoming” for people all around the Ohio Valley. Jerry wanted Olney’s idea of family to extend to the town. And he wanted to do that with a float in the Pumpkin Parade.

The float project quickly caught on. Students and faculty, led by King, got up early Saturday mornings to work in the gravel lot outside the Henderson building. They tore up old drapes, molded cardboard, painted and painted and painted, until they had mounted a four-foot, paper-mâché pumpkin on one of the school’s hay wagons. In subtle oranges and yellows and browns, the pumpkin’s “skin” revealed the continents of globe, and giant blossoms, leaves, and vines. Students had used art class to paint the flags of countries from which current Olney students hale and lined the edge of the wagon with those bright, waving banners. In the library working on a project about the Harlem Renaissance, Kita Frick-Shipley ‘14 (Richmond, Indiana – 212 miles) and Inea Lehner ‘14 (Blue Mounds, Wisconsin – 636 miles) say they enjoyed those early mornings working with Jerry and the other students. “It was the beginning of the year,” says Frick-Shipley. “You got to paint and talk with everyone else and really get to know them.” Lehner agrees. “It was cool to see all those flags, where everyone is from. On the actual float, the flags were representing us surrounding the world, and we were all brought together in this place and a new home.”

When the work was finished, the Olney Friends School float trundled down the street behind the school’s Ford tractor proclaiming, “The world is our hometown.” Walking beside the float, Olney students and faculty waved to the children along the street, taking a step toward feeling at home, connected to this small place in Ohio.

Dan Chen ’11 from Wuhu, China (7,366 miles) says Olney gives her the experience of having a new kind of family. Chen doesn’t have siblings, but at Olney she feels like she does. “People from all over the world live here like brothers and sisters. I love it.” Martina Karugarama ‘11 from Kigali, Rwanda (7,748 miles), agrees. “Everyone, the students, feels like your siblings,” she says, and then she goes on, “And then when we sit at lunch, with students and adults at the same table, and your math teacher corrects your manners, it’s just like your mom.” For Karugarama that feeling of being reminded of one place by the familiarity of another goes both ways. In her home in Kigali, she is sometimes reminded of trips to Riesbeck’s, the local grocery Olney students visit to purchase everything from shampoo to produce. “You know how we walk to town here at Olney, how we never use cars, and carry things in our hands? In Kigali, at home, when we walk to the store, I say to my friends, ‘Oh, This is just like Olney!’”

Perched on sofas in the student lounge, Joey Dockery ‘13 from Charlotte, North Carolina (329 miles) and Vilius Kalinauskas ‘11 (Detroit, Michigan – 188 miles ) discuss Olney’s place in their lives. Dockery thinks the feeling of being at home is tied to loving the friends she has made here. “We’re all a family. I feel like I can go to Patrick or Martina and talk about my problems,” she says. After a moment, she continues. “I feel safe here, like I can let my guard down. It feels like home.” Kalinauskas agrees, but he also hopes that feeling of home, of feeling comfortable and safe with his neighbors, is one that people in Barnesville share. “Even though we’re different, have different ways of looking at life, we’re still people. We have a desire to be safe to be ourselves around each other.”

At Olney, people come together to share how they have lived and how they might make choices about how to participate in the world. As Dan Chen puts it, “Everything at Olney combines together.” That’s just how we work.

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