The Belltower: Alumni News

It’s hard to find a more celebrated moment in U.S. history than NASA during the early days of the space race. And Hollywood most certainly agrees, having churned out scores of biopics elevating and celebrating the brilliant minds who first placed Armstrong on the moon. Before that “one small step for man” in 1969, there were countless hours of scientific theory, space instrument creation, and many other spacecraft sent up to observe and report on the great beyond. 

There are alumni, and then there are alumni. You know the ones - they spend their lives celebrating and elevating their school, by coaching, teaching, volunteering, and even sending their children and grandchildren to their alma mater. There are few in Burr and Burton’s 193-year history whose DNA is so indelibly intertwined with the school as Ben Beers ’61. 

This year, Ben celebrated his 62nd year as a member of the facilities staff, starting as a part-time, after-school employee when his mother was ill in 1959 and moving to full-time after graduation. Ben famously boasts that he got married on a Saturday, graduated on a Sunday, and started his full-time career at Burr and Burton on Monday. 

Terrell Williams ’97 grew up in Newark, NJ, and attended BBA for four years. He graduated from the University of Vermont with honors in 2001, and earned his Master's degree in clinical social work in 2008 from Bryn Mawr. He works as a school social worker at Imhotep Institute Charter High School in Philadelphia, and teaches a History of Hip Hop class virtually for BBA, alongside BBA social studies teachers Pete Nicholson and Andrew Cassarino. Terrell lives in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia with his fiancé and their nine-child blended family.

Clem Wright ‘05 grew up in South Londonderry, a self-described “‘Over the Mountain’ kid.” After graduating in 2005, Clem went on to Harvard to earn a degree in English, and after college, he worked at a malaria non-profit in Sierra Leone before moving to San Francisco to work for Google. We sat down with Clem to talk about his work, his trajectory, and some of his favorite BBA moments that led him to where he is today.

Megan Beattie-Cassan ‘99 knows Burr and Burton from multiple angles: She’s an alum, she’s the current school nurse, and next year, she’ll also be a BBA parent. As the school nurse in the time of a global pandemic, Beattie-Cassan’s expertise has been a critical to both BBA’s reopening in the fall of 2020 and the successful prevention of the spread of COVID on campus.  We caught up with Beattie-Cassan in late May to learn more about her many connections to BBA.

From the forthcoming winter VIEW: Burr and Burton alum Colin O’Leary ‘09 was in the middle of a Ph.D. studying respiratory viruses when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020.  Read about how the pandemic affected his research, why he came to study virology, and his hopes for the future of public health.