Tell us a little about your childhood and what life was like before you came to Berkshire.

I was born at Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington in 1954, the older of two children.  My younger brother, Dan Maghery '74, was a stand-out athlete at Berkshire School for four years and captain of several teams.  Not surprisingly, my childhood was largely about sports!  And, I loved it.  I have wonderful memories of picnic lunches on our way to ‘away’ football games with my mother, brother and friends.  We spent our winter evenings at basketball games, cheering our hearts out.  And, our weekends were about traveling all over Massachusetts to attend gymnastics meets.  My father introduced gymnastics to Western Massachusetts in the late 50s and early 60s.  He ensured that the small local high school had state-of-the-art gymnastics equipment and a competitive, first-rate team.  And, in the spring and summer, my family’s world was all about baseball.  My memories are of watching my brother play Little League games (I was the Dodgers statistician), listening to the Red Sox on the radio, or seeing games on television, and playing stick ball in my yard with the neighborhood boys, one of whom was none other than Bill Gulotta! 

And what is it that you do now?

I own Details, Inc., an interior design firm, and Porter & Mags, a lifestyle and home furnishings retail store, both of which are on Cape Cod.  I am an interior designer, specializing in residential work.  I founded the company in 1981 in Boston, moved it to the Berkshires for twenty years in 1993, and relocated to Cape Cod three years ago.  My firm has done projects throughout the United States.  Our website is www.detailsinteriorsinc.com.

My interest in interior design actually evolved directly from an opportunity I had during my senior year at Berkshire.  For the first time, that year, Berkshire offered a course in Art History, taught by Mrs. Margot Mabie.  Taking that course changed the course of my life.  I LOVED studying the history of Art, and went on to major in Art History at Middlebury College.  While there I studied studio art as well, and I realized I could blend my interests by pursuing a career in interior design.

My work has been extremely rewarding.  I work with several clients with whom I began working decades ago.  In a few cases I’ve designed homes for the children of former clients.  And, the world of creative and talented people with whom I have the pleasure of working is humbling.  I am grateful to be a part of such a collaborative effort every day when I go to work.

What brought you to Berkshire? What year was it, how old were you, how did you feel about coming?

Those are weighty questions.  As I was told the story, Mr. Knerr and Mr. Minnerly contacted my parents and asked them if they would consider allowing me to be a part of a “Pilot Program” that Berkshire School was creating in the fall of 1969.  I was in Mexico City at the time, spending the summer as an exchange student between my freshman and sophomore years.  When I returned from that three month adventure (I was horribly homesick!), my parents had sold the little house in the center of Sheffield where I had grown up, and moved to what was then called The Ivanhoe Country House, a bed & breakfast a mile from Berkshire’s campus…and they told me that I was going to attend Berkshire as one of nine girls entering the School that year. 

My exposure to Berkshire prior to becoming a student there was initially seeing a dozen or so “Berkshire Boys,” always dressed smartly in their matching green blazers, filing into Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church.  From a very early age I remember thinking that there was something very classy and special about those boys.  I was intrigued. 

Later, my father had scheduled various kinds of games and scrimmages between Berkshire teams and his local high school teams, so I spent time on Berkshire’s campus to attend those basketball and baseball games.  And, just prior to the year that I attended Berkshire, I had frequently worked as a babysitter for Mr. and Mrs. Geer, so I had seen campus life from yet another perspective.  When the opportunity to attend Berkshire came about, something I had never considered as it was an all-male school, I was excited.  I had been impressed, curious and intrigued for years by that point.   

What was your first impression of the School and the people in it, especially being one of the first women to attend?

As you can tell from my previous answer, my first impressions occurred prior to my entrance as a student in the fall of 1969.  One important piece of that early childhood experience I had with Berkshire was that I had a very close friend, Patience Cole, whose father was on the faculty.  They moved away when I was in the fourth grade, but I had spent a bit of time at Patience’s house, and most notably remember joining a group of faculty kids in helping Mr. Chase with the maple sap collection.  We were on the back of a pick-up truck, collecting sap buckets, and I thought it was a blast!

My first impressions, once I was a student, are honestly pretty blurry.  Beyond the fact that, like any self-conscious teenaged girl, I spent way too much time worrying about the outfits I was going to wear each day, and whether I was having a bad hair day or a (rare) good one.  We nine girls were abundantly aware that there were lots of eyes on us…so I think we might have been even MORE self-conscious about our appearance than was even normal for someone attending a new school. 

Can you tell us about the friends you made at Berkshire?

Friends?  Where do I begin?!  I could literally write about this subject for hours.  I am truly blessed to count among my current friends lots of Berkshire alums, most of whom were contemporaries, but I have also had the good fortune to meet several alums at various alumni events since graduating, and in a couple of cases we’ve become such close friends and have known one another SO long, that we’ve almost convinced ourselves that we attended Berkshire at the same time!

Paula Pevzner ’73 and I are, without a doubt, classic BFFs.  We’ve been more like sisters than friends for forty years, have seen one another through college, our marriages, unfortunately our almost-concurrent divorces, single mom life, mid-life dating disasters (we’re thinking of writing a funny book), and adventures too numerous and in some cases too outrageous to mention.  We are ‘partners in crime’ and on many occasions we’ve noticed that the minute we get on the phone, we revert to being fifteen years old all over again.  We have a blast.  I couldn’t live without her.  Paula lives in Manhattan, where she manages a post-production video facility.

Fran Fusco ’79 is another amazing Berkshire friend.  Great story.  She came to my office one day about ten years ago to interview for a job.  Of course we hit it off immediately, she came to work with my company for a while, and we are now very close.  The story within the story is that when I was a senior at Berkshire, the School created its first women’s soccer team.  I was named one of the captains of that team, along with Annie Goodwillie ’75 who could actually play soccer!  I was a decent athlete, but I knew absolutely nothing about soccer.  I just remember awkwardly running around the field, hoping I didn’t look too ridiculous.  Fast forward a few years, and the women’s soccer program at Berkshire developed considerably in a very short time.  Fran Fusco was a star soccer player at Berkshire from the fall of ’75 through her senior year, captain in ’79 and went on to be named to the First Team All-American Women’s Soccer Team while at Brown University.  When we first met and talked about this, I like to think that my running around the field awkwardly a few years prior to Fran’s arrival really did serve a purpose beyond giving girls some form of exercise that fall!  Fran is currently the Chief Executive and Master Coach at The Ford Institute for Transformational Training (founded by the late Debbie Ford) in San Diego, CA.

There is also a small group of members of the Class of ’73 who maintain an email loop, of which Paula and I are a part (we had to break the gender barrier there a few years back too… it started with five guys until we invited ourselves to join!).  We share all kinds of nonsense online, and, while I know some very bright and funny people in other areas of my life, none compare to the quick wit that is woven through this particular email chain.  I love nothing more than to get one of their nonsensical chains in my inbox, mid-day at the office. 

I’m in phone or email contact with other Berkshire friends as well.  In fact, I can honestly say that I don’t think a day goes by that I am not in touch with someone who attended Berkshire.  We have been through it all together… births, illnesses, deaths, marriages, divorces, career changes, business collaborations and everything else that life throws at us.  I’ve designed homes for a few of my alumni friends as well, which is always a fun endeavor.  I consider many of these friends to be my family, and I feel very, very fortunate to know each of them.       

What’s the most important lesson you learned here that’s been most useful in your adult life?

If I had to select one thing that I learned at Berkshire that I’ve found most useful throughout my adult life, it would easily be that I learned how to study.  Initially, that discipline that was necessary if I was going to succeed academically at Berkshire proved enormously helpful when I went to Middlebury College.  There were lots of smart, capable students at Middlebury, and the competition was intense, but I always felt as though I had a leg up on many of them because the study habits that I had been taught at Berkshire were so automatic at that point.  I was disciplined, organized, and thorough about everything I did in terms of my academics.  That approach to getting things done has served me very well in many other areas of life, most particularly my interior design business.  I often use the analogy of “homework” when talking with my clients.  If a meeting or presentation goes well, I can come away with a hundred or so different follow-up assignments.  Using basically the same skill set that I learned at Berkshire, I can organize and compartmentalize, and prioritize what has to be done. 

What about any influential teachers, advisors or coaches? Were there any who really helped shape your experience? 

Selecting one teacher who most influenced me is tough.  I adored Mr. Young in History class, and, maybe not coincidentally, have enjoyed a life-long passion for studying history.  I never loved math of any kind (although learning it has served me well in business on a daily basis), but I very much enjoyed Mr. Geer.  Mme. Stein was an enormous influence on me at the time, and she is single-handedly responsible for my attending Middlebury.  She was very supportive of my going further with my study of French, and highly recommended that I apply to Middlebury, a decision I have never regretted.  As mentioned earlier, Margot Mabie taught the first Art History class during my last year at Berkshire and I fell passionately in love with that subject, majored in it in college, and used it as the basis for founding my interior design company in 1983.  I have always felt very, very fortunate that she taught that course in as interesting a way as she did, the very year that she did.

What’s it like when you come back to campus? What’s the best part, or the most surprising?

I just love driving up the driveway.  A flood of memories flows through my mind each and every time, and I hear echoes of conversations, ball games, special alumni events, and a world of friends.  I’m also known for my relentless honesty, and lately it’s been harder and harder to come back.  When Memorial was torn down and replaced, a huge part of my experience of Berkshire School went with it.  While I totally understand the many, many reasons why it had to be done, I will always miss the majesty and history of that building.  For me, at this point, the School is the people with whom I have shared it.  That’s the best part. 

This is very open and honest of you! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your Berkshire story and the path you’ve since found. Reflecting back on it all, do you have any sage advice for current students, hoping to similarly forge their own paths?

Wow, I guess I do.  If I’m being honest, you often hear that one should “do what they love,” or “follow their dreams,” etc.  I think that in retrospect, I took that particular kind of advice a little too far, and way too fast.  I founded my interior design business at the age of twenty-seven, and I will always remember that I had a whopping total of seventy-five dollars in my checking account at the time!  Yikes!  If I had that whole decade of my life to live over, I would at the very least find a job working for someone who did exactly what I thought I wanted to do on my own.  I never did that.  I worked in the wholesale part of the business, had interior design clients, but never worked for another interior designer. 

And, to address what I think my own missteps were in a wider way, I would explore career options that weren’t quite so literally what I thought I wanted to eventually do.  In other words, I’d keep my options open.  I was very, very focused and single-minded, maybe to a fault.  And starting off with $75 dollars in my pocket obviously made things more challenging than they needed to be.  Had I kept my options open, I’m almost certain I would have gotten a graduate degree, and the chances are very good that it might have been in an entirely different field altogether.  No regrets!  Just food for thought.  It has all worked out quite well, all things considered.

There is a great book that I enjoyed reading and love to recommend to young people trying to look ahead to their own futures.  It’s called “The Defining Decade, Why Your Twenties Matter – and How to Make the Most of Them NOW,” by Meg Jay, PhD.  I shared it with my four twenty-somethings, and I think that they all found it to be very informative.  Meg Jay kind of de-mystifies that chapter in each of our lives when we suddenly don’t have the structure of the nine months of a school year, and we are face to face with decisions that will determine the path that our futures will take.  I wish Meg Jay had been around in 1976!