Tending What Matters: Team Palmer Cares for the Lucas Todd Wheeler '18 Memorial Terrace

Some places hold more than they let on.

The Lucas Todd Wheeler '18 Memorial Terrace sits at the center of campus life, where students gather during warm evenings, come together for Tailgate events, and fill the seats during games. It is one of those spots that quietly anchors campus, overlooking Brown Field and the incredible lake view behind it. It is also a tribute to Lucas Todd Wheeler '18, a beloved member of this community who passed away during his senior year and has never really left.

This past weekend, a group of students and faculty gave it some extra care.

Through an initiative led by Team Palmer, a handful of community members gave up part of their free day to re-mulch the terrace. No requirement, no special recognition. Just people who showed up because they understood what the space represents. Will Brochu '26 coordinated donated mulch and supplies through Brochu Nursery and Landscaping before the work even began. Anelya Caesar '27, a junior student leader, organized and ran the project from start to finish. Faculty members TJ Palmer and Alicia Wingard were right there alongside them, shovels in hand, happy to get a little dirty.

For Alicia Wingard, Instructional Support teacher and Team Palmer member, the project was a natural fit. "Every Team Leader takes on a service project with their academic team," she said, "and this one is important to Team Palmer."

Nobody had to be there. It was a weekend, and there were easier ways to spend it. But the people who came understood what the space holds, and that was reason enough.

Anelya felt it, too. "It was really cool to be able to give to something that has that extra purpose behind it," she said. "Afterward, teachers came up to me and told me about Luke, and how much they appreciated us doing work on the space dedicated to him."

That moment, a student learning about someone she never got to know through the people who loved him, captures something essential about what it means to be part of a boarding school in New Hampshire. Memory doesn't only live in photographs or ceremonies. It lives in the way a community keeps caring, keeps tending, keeps showing up.

Lucas Wheeler was woven into the fabric of this school, and his legacy lives in the terrace and in everyone who gathers there. Look closely and you'll find four sculptures built into the stonework: a hockey puck, a lacrosse net, and a spellbook and wand for his love of Harry Potter. Small details. But the kind that invite you to pause, look closer, and remember that the places we love are full of stories.

Projects like this carry a quiet reminder for all of us: to value the time we have here and to lean into what we love. At private boarding schools like Brewster, service moments like this shape students just as much as anything that happens in a classroom.

It is not only the academics, the athletics, or the setting along Lake Winnipesaukee that make this place different. It is the culture of showing up, for each other, and for the memory of those who came before.