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Giamatti and Dawidoff '81 establish fund for their mothers
Nicholas Dawidoff '81 and Paul Giamatti grew up around Hopkins. Both of their mothers, Heidi Dawidoff and Toni Giamatti, were longtime teachers on the Hill, impacting generations of students. Both men are now in the midst of illustrious careers of their own as an author and an actor, and combined forces on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2018, to honor and celebrate the legacy that their mothers had at Hopkins with a screening of The Catcher Was a Spy, benefitting the Heidi Dawidoff and Toni Giamatti Fund for New Haven Scholars and English Teachers of Promise.
Dawidoff released his best-selling debut novel, The Catcher Was a Spy, back in 1994. It follows the intriguing life of third-string major league baseball catcher, lawyer, and OSS spy, Moe Berg. Fast forward to 2018, and the book was made into a film starring Paul Rudd and Paul Giamatti, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January and released in select theaters this past June.
The Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University served as the location for the Hopkins community showing of the film on September 15. The ticketed event sold out, and included a cocktail hour with Dawidoff and Giamatti, the screening of the film, and a discussion moderated by Hopkins parent and writer for New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon. Proceeds from each ticket supported the new fund.
At the cocktail hour, 70 guests mingled with Giamatti and received books inscribed by Dawidoff, following which a crowd of 240 guests filed into the auditorium and enjoyed the screening of the film. At its conclusion, a panel discussion was held with Dawidoff and Giamatti, moderated by Bazelon. The crowd then had time to ask questions before the evening concluded. Attendees included alumni/ae, current and past parents, faculty emeriti/ae, former Heads of School, and friends.
At the conclusion of the event, the fund had raised more than $41,000 to support financial aid and faculty professional development. In the words of Dawidoff and Giamatti: “Our mothers adored their students, every one of their students. Committed as they were to your reading, writing and thinking, we suspect the most fulfilling part of their work was seeing you in full before you saw yourselves. To our mothers, you were all compelling people, the heroic characters in the long story that was their teaching life. To us, and perhaps to you, they were a little bit heroic themselves--two women who became revered teachers in what remained largely a man’s world; two women who helped, by their example, to make their school, and their city, fairer, more progressive places. Our mothers loved that city, New Haven, because it was a compact community with such worldly diversity. Both of them hoped the fullness of the city would join them in their classrooms, and in those of their colleagues. Our mothers knew that New Haven was complicated, a city that, as it went forward, would depend upon thoughtful, creative citizens who approached life with rigor and compassion—qualities they valued in students and literary figures alike. Now, in their name, we have created a fund that will endow financial aid scholarships so that future generations of talented young New Haven students can attend Hopkins. The fund will also make professional development resources available, enabling young, gifted English teachers to deepen their abilities.”
Special thanks to the following- Nicholas Dawidoff ‘81 and Gwen Evans ‘84 who conceptualized the event and worked to make it a reality; David Evans ‘81 for providing a copy of the book for all attendees to take home; and all those who donated to the fund and attended the event.
To view photos from the event, please click here.
Photos by Harold Shapiro and Lauren Reichart.
Photos by Harold Shapiro and Lauren Reichart.
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