Rebecca Folkman is one of my closest confidantes at Commonwealth School, but frequently when I see her coming, I tend to run. Inevitably I’ve given her something I’ve written to edit, and instead of just giving it a cursory glance and recommending, “adding a comma here,” or “losing a preposition there,” she’s read it for hours. And hours. Like she’s getting a post-doc in close reading with Charles Chatfield and Eric Davis combined. She’s examined every noun, every verb, every em-dash, every tense, every thought, and right now she’s thinking, “Janetta, you can’t use ‘every’ more than once in a paragraph, what are you thinking?!”
But after I’ve run, and after she’s caught up with me (and she always does), I realize that because of Rebecca my work is better and so am I. She elevates everything she touches to a level I didn’t previously know existed.
I’ve only had the privilege of knowing Rebecca for six out of her 25 years at Commonwealth but in the four we shared an office, I saw her throw herself into everything she touched with incredible passion: French, short story, fiction writing, film, and especially her advisees.
Outside of Commonwealth, Rebecca loves art, and is an avid collector: Paris, where she enviably spends her summers and breaks; New York, where she takes the trains most weekends; her dog; her husbands; her son; her brothers; and her beloved mother who passed away this year.
But the part of Rebecca that is shared with everyone in this room is the incredible effort she puts into school publications. Bill Wharton says, “Commonwealth’s publications have always been well-written and well-edited but over the past decade with hard work, discipline, and dash, Rebecca has generated ideas, recruited writers, edited out superfluous verbiage, gathered and culled art and photos to put together magazines, newsletters, and calendars that are as smart as ever but also come with her distinctive sense of style. By turning out pieces that so effectively convey the spirit of the School, Rebecca has helped knit our community more closely together.”
Rebecca, writing this piece without having you as an editor was a daunting task. I hope I didn’t use any passive verbs. Thank you, RF, for all you do for Commonwealth and for me. Je t’aime.
But after I’ve run, and after she’s caught up with me (and she always does), I realize that because of Rebecca my work is better and so am I. She elevates everything she touches to a level I didn’t previously know existed.