50th Timeline: 2018 – The “Falciani Thumb”

For nearly the entire history of the School, the Board of Trustee sought to purchase a small sliver of land that interrupted the flow of the School’s property between the Salem Building and the athletic fields. For various reasons, Trustees failed year after year in convincing the owner to sell. However, in 2018, after 2 decades of diligent work by long-time Trustee, John Falciani, the School finally purchased this property.  Most students and parents never even noticed because the owner had never put up a fence or otherwise restricted students from walking over his land, as students often did without even knowing they had “left” the campus. Acquiring this property was critical for any plans for future construction and to relieve the constant worry that any future owner could have erected a fence.  So, the Board worked vigorously behind the scenes raising money while waiting for an opportunity. Trustee Bill Schmidt remembered the episode well: “The thumb is a piece of land that stretched out close to the Hanshi Deshbandhu building which we didn’t own but we used. It was the longtime dream of one of the board members, John Falciani, that at some point we would purchase that small piece of land. It was one of those dreams that I kind of assumed would never ever transpire and so when we actually bought it, I suggested we named it the John Falciani Thumb. It fits into the category of some of the things I never thought I would ever live long enough to see.”  Naming the property after John Falciani was just one way of thanking John, whose pro bono service to the School as an attorney has shaped the history of the School as deeply as anyone. At the very end of 2017, shortly before the acquisition of the property became final, the Board presented Falciani with the Founder’s Award.  Named after the heroic early School leaders, it remains the School’s highest honor for service. This was followed in 2018 with the placement of a simple stone marker naming the purchased property the “Falciani Thumb” after the man who pursued its purchase and the property’s shape, which when viewed on a map, had resembled a thumb.