RE LOG Fall 2024

FALL 2024 Ransom Everglades LOG 91 To submit an obituary of an alum, former faculty member, former trustee or former administrator of Ransom Everglades who has passed away, please email Maggie Pearson ’80 at mpearson@ransomeverglades.org . We request that you keep your submission to no more than 500 words and remember to include a high resolution photo and the graduating class years of all Ransom Everglades alumni or students mentioned. Submissions for In Loving Memory National Championship in 2023. Liam played a key role in helping Brown win the title of Best Overall Team in College Sailing in 2023-24. Liam had high aspirations of becoming a professional sailor. Liam is survived by his parents, Alison and Douglas O’Keefe; his siblings, Sawyer and Mac O’Keefe; his grandmother, Beverly Gerald; and many loving aunts, uncles and cousins. Stephen Walach Former faculty member Stephen Walach passed away on April 1, 2024, after a courageous struggle against an ultra rare cancer, EHE. Steve’s teaching career spanned 40 years beginning in Miami at Westview, Corporate Academy and Ransom Everglades School. In 2002, he started at Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, Mass. As an English teacher, he taught his students the importance of writing their own story. He was a classroom innovator, a master teacher who instilled the power of language and the value of each perspective. As he listened to students, he taught to listen to themselves and each other. Steve is survived by his loving wife, Helen (Jakubowicz) Walach; sisters Patricia Walach Keough and husband David Keough, Kathleen Walach and husband John Hammond, Ellen Pereira and husband Michael Pereira; his nephew Brendan Keough and wife Katie and children Ronan and Colin; nephew Owen Keough, Leilani Alvarez and their children, Olin and Dalia; nephews Joseph Pereira, Adam Pereira, and Michael Hammond; his brother-in-law Edward Jakubowicz and his sister-in-law Monica Jakubowicz. Steve loved to get his hands into the earth and reap the bounty it gave back. Service learning projects and health classes were incorporated into the organic gardens that Steve created at the schools where he taught. With countless students, their families and community volunteers, he oversaw the production of literally tons of organic produce that were delivered to soup kitchens and food pantries. In 1973, Steve graduated cum laude from Brown University with a concentration in Human Studies. His tenure at Brown had been interrupted by his conscientious objector service as a psychiatric aide at Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I. Years later, he contributed a chapter to author and Vietnam veteran Terry Nau’s 2020 Voices of the VietnamWar .