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Margaret Bailey Speer Award Presented to Karin Blakemore '71 April 29, 2016

Dr. Karin Blakemore has spent her career making life significantly better for mothers, babies, and children. A leader in her field of Obstetrics and Gynecology, she is a practicing physician, researcher, and teacher. After over 20 years in the role, she recently stepped down as Director of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For many years, she has also served as director of the division’s training program for fellows and residents. She is a member of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins and has served on numerous boards, including the Committee on Ethics for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Early in her career, Dr. Blakemore developed an interest in genetics, and she has carried out ground-breaking investigations into in utero diagnosis of genetic abnormalities. Work continues in the research that Dr. Blakemore began on the potential of prenatal bone marrow transplants to alleviate genetic disorders before birth. It’s research that could lead to the prevention of diseases such as sickle cell anemia.

But obstetrics, she says — old-fashioned doctoring — is her “first love.” Dr. Blakemore continues as Professor in the Department of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Director of Prenatal Genetics, mentoring trainees both clinically and in research, and focusing on prenatal diagnosis and therapy. She also cares for mothers and delivers babies.

Showing both courage and grace, Dr. Blakemore has certainly made a safer and better world for many and, in doing so, has brought credit to The Shipley School. For her distinguished contributions to research and clinical practice, for her service to science in general and to countless mothers and children in particular, Shipley presents Dr. Karin Blakemore with the Margaret Bailey Speer Award.

Acceptance Speech:

It all starts with my mother and father. What did they see in Shipley? That they entrusted four of their daughters to its influence? A good education meant more to them than probably, anything. They grew up in the 1920’s & 30’s, and lived as teens through the Great Depression. They knew the foundation for what you wanted to do in life starts with an education. (And globally, even today, an education is not a given.) Once we each reached 7th grade, my parents sent all four of us to Shipley.
 
Shipley instilled in me awe and respect for teachers, that I hold to this day. The noblest profession. Teachers at Shipley did more than teach a subject. They taught us how to think. How to think for ourselves. They wanted to know what we thought and how we got there. It must have been very gratifying for them, to see it all work.

So Thank You Madame Egli, Madame Shaubacher. To read L’etranger in French! You knew what existentialism is for it melted into your soul. Thank you Mrs. Etris and Ms. Josten -- who else would have made 5 years of Latin so -- Important? And thank you Ms. Rosenbaum, Mrs. Riley, Ms. Alice, Mrs. Gramley, Ms. Yarnall, Mr. Brewer, Mrs. Gordon. &…Ms. MacLean, Oh, I remember being in her office. (But it was usually because of my sister, Holly.) Ms. McLean was, …like a kind hawk. Her eyes missed nothing. Her decisions, rational, but guided by her heart.

There was not a lot of emphasis on Science, but the Science that we got was so well taught. The Why. Translated to: sugar in your coffee, or getting the stain off an old bottle: similia similibus solvuntur! Like the English, French and Latin that I look back upon with AMAZEMENT, our teachers taught us how to think.

Which brings me to my friends, my classmates at Shipley. We were all so different! But we respected each other’s minds, as complicated or controversial as they were. As we were. My closest friend was Holly Laird. A poet. Together we explored some of the wildest places; deep and winding caverns, and high, high mountain tops, where we looked out at the world together. “Toujour inseparables” as Madame Egli used to say.

Shipley fostered all that and more. Yes, there is more. We were girls. Didn’t matter, to us. Girls in the 60’s and early 70’s. A tumultuous time of change. The Revolution. Civil Rights. Women’s lib. And the music. You couldn’t tell us anything we did not know to be true ourselves. And Shipley PROMOTED this!

This conservative girls’ boarding school (perhaps so some thought) was turned upside down. (Or, maybe Mrs. Epes decided, It would be so.) If it didn’t make sense to us -- change the rule! And change they did. By the end of the 60’s the dress code was completely different; the boarders were wearing THEIR PAJAMAS to class. “That Quaker School!” my father would say. Too liberal. Too empowering. “It’s those Shipley folk!” he would say. Even I believe the School pushed the limits in terms of listening to us, about what we thought was really meaningful (and what was not); what we allowed to stay, and what had to go. Or so we thought. We didn’t change everything. But we felt we could change anything, providing the logic and rationale were clearly voiced.

We were heard. Class song from our time: “There’s only one thing wrong with Shipley School, No men, No men, No men, No men, No men, No men, No men!” I met my husband Jim during my years at Shipley. He recalls, stopping by the school, “The people were really nice. They treated you like a guest at Shipley when you came.” Well, I GUESS SO, Jim! You walking into an all-girls school! I was so glad, and I think it is so interesting, that Shipley took its first male student the year after we graduated. I used to think about him a lot, what it must have been like for him!
 
Jim also says of Shipley, “I always thought of your school as giving you a little bit of everything, kind of like a small liberal arts college. With Freedom of thought.” Well, that about sums it up, doesn’t it? So that is what Shipley produced. A bunch of students, women at the time, who never took anything at face value. Who questioned everything. Who would never, never, never give up, if we felt it was right.

Perhaps our minds, were no different, than the 3 Quaker women who founded Shipley School in 1894. Could that really be true? Did women think like that in 1894? I think it is true. Our brains have simply not evolved that quickly -- 122 years later is just a speck of time in human evolution.

I wonder what they were really like. Hannah, Elizabeth, and Katharine. I think I would have liked having conversations with them. Them and those who followed. Margaret Bailey Speer. Isota Tucker Epes. Nancy Lauber. Gary Gruber. Steven Piltch. And all of the teachers and staff.

I’ve led my life, or my life led me, to explore my ideas, and seek the truth. I chose a career where my work, because I was never remiss to do anything when it came to work, but where my work would only be put to good use.

I think I must have passed some of that along to my son, Joe. Not long ago Jim, Joe and I met Lama Tenzin, yes, one of the Dali Lama’s monks, who runs an orphanage near the top of India. Lama Tenzin rescues girls, and a few boys, from the a place called the Upper Dolpo, who would otherwise have no life, no opportunities. But mostly girls, because the girls are utterly not valued in the Upper Dolpo, and if they have a disability, they are considered a bad omen. As Lama Tenzin explained, “The girls do all the work” and “Why do they get treated this way because they are girls!” The first time Lama Tenzin went to the Upper Dolpo, he rescued an 8 year old little girl who had been put out to live with the animals, because she’d developed spasticity, when she was 2. She was among the first children he brought with him down from the Himalayas.

And he started an orphanage for these Tibetan girls. To give them an education. The very best education. And prove that these girls were NOT bad omens. Lama Tenzin is the most feminist person I have ever met. (And coming from my generation, that’s saying A LOT.) So my son met him, too, and the next thing you know they’re emailing each other. Long story short, Joe accompanied the lama on his latest mission to the top of the Himalayas, to the Upper Dolpo, to the middle of nowhere, over 18,000 foot mountains. It is the most remote inhabited place on Earth. To get back, you walk, for two weeks, to get to a road. They safely brought down with them 4 children.

I think that is something that a Shipley graduate would have done. What Joe did. I attribute it totally to his own strength of character. But I think my Shipley upbringing must have had something to do with it. It is truly a blessing to have a job you love. Work isn’t work. When work is your very being, work is a joy. I have been so lucky. If you were me, or if I were you, I would not forget to thank them, these Shipley folk.

And so, on behalf of my sisters, my mother, and my father, my husband Jim, my son Joe, my grandson Ameer; my classmates; students before us; the students today, and the students to come, -- and on behalf of my Shipley mentors: Thank You, for this recognition (I’ve only done what Shipley taught me to do), and for giving me the foundation and the freedom to be what I am.
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The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.