Wallingford, Conn.

The Lanphier Center, dedicated in 2015, is the latest addition to the campus of Choate Rosemary Hall, one of America’s most prestigious prep schools. Choate has educated leaders and figures across the American spectrum since its founding in 1896, from John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson to Paul Giamatti and Ivanka Trump. The new multimillion-dollar facility for mathematics and computer science even houses a robotics lab. It was donated by Edward Lanphier (class of ’74) and his wife, Cameron. The two met while they were both teaching at the school after college. I went to Choate, and Lanphier nearly failed me in biology. He gave me a break, he told me on graduation day in 1980, because, he reasoned, I wasn’t there for biology. He, too, went on to other things, making a fortune in the biotech industry. Not all my teachers made good.