trevordayschool

My brother Gabe Wiener (1970–1997) attended Trevor (The Day School) in the 1970s and 1980s, during the earliest days of the technological revolution. Long before smart phones, fax machines, and Chromebooks, Gabe was fascinated with technology. A "tinkerer" as a child, he would take apart appliances in our home to see what made them tick. In fact, he became such an expert that we no longer had to call for repair technicians when something broke down—Gabe fixed everything himself! He then moved on to building with Legos, figuring out how to hack the newest toy on the market (something called the "Rubik's Cube"), completing every RadioShack DIY electronic kit that came out, and regularly rigging our apartment with booby traps so that when anyone walked into a room, alarms and sirens went off. Gabe was the only person of any age that we knew who had a CB Radio, and when he outgrew that, he learned Morse code and became the youngest person in America at that time to be granted a ham radio license at the ripe old age of nine. He also had a modem at home in the early 1980s, when the only people who even knew what the internet was were professors at major universities and scientists. He was different from many of his peers. He spent a lot of time on his own, more interested in the discoveries he was making than the best party to go to on a Saturday night. Luckily for him, the Trevor community embraced his differences and encouraged Gabe to be himself and to continue to explore his passions. (Mr. Lindow, Upper School Computer Science Teacher and Mathematics Teacher, and Trevor's longest-tenured faculty member was a big part of that!) These passions eventually inspired a career that ended up looking different than he would have imagined while he was in school. Gabe took his zeal for technology and a love for music and blended them into a career in sound engineering while simultaneously launching his own record label dedicated to early music (Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque). Gabe's story is a wonderful guidepost to all of us as we navigate our way through life. It's a reminder to embrace the things we are most passionate about— that bring us joy. We can't be afraid to march to our own drummer. To anyone who sees even a small part of themselves in Gabe's journey—to anyone who has ever felt that they were the only ones in the world who liked the things that they like, who have felt that no one understood them; who felt different than those around them: Recognize that the things that make you feel different today are the same things that will be your superpowers later in life. It is our family's hope that the Makerspace will be a place where students at Trevor have an opportunity to discover their own passions in the same way that Gabe did while he was here. -Jenny (Wiener) Steingart '82 Gabe Wiener '84 Makerspace TREVOR DAY SCHOOL / 61 INSIDE TREVOR TREVOR TRANSLATES FEATURE AR TICLES ALUMNI

• Cover