After the loss of a beloved community member, students create a lasting legacy in her honor
Last fall, the Williston Northampton School community grieved the loss of Elise Ollmann-Kahle ’25, a six-year senior who fought a yearslong battle with cancer. Elise was known for her love of learning, strong work ethic, caring personality, and fondness of the color pink. “She was,” says fellow senior Vivian Walker ’25, “the sweetest and most genuine person I’ve ever met.”
Determined to honor their friend and to keep her spirit alive, the class of 2025 set out to create the Elise Ollmann-Kahle Class of 2025 Memorial Fund. To generate sufficient income to meaningfully contribute to financial aid every year, an endowed fund requires a minimum initial investment of $50,000—a high bar for a group of students.
Undeterred, the Senior Class Gift Committee began fundraising, generating 114 donations from the senior class alone, then pulling in students from younger grades. Throughout the winter, basketball, hockey, squash, and swimming teams took turns hosting Pink-Out games and sponsoring bake sales and other fundraising initiatives while asking fans to sport Elise’s favorite color. At each event, students packed the stands to cheer on the Wildcats while remembering their schoolmate. Ultimately, hundreds of donors—including parents, alumni, and friends—contributed more than $60,880 to fully endow Elise’s fund. In the future, it will help defray the cost of a Williston education for an incoming student.
“It was inspiring to see the whole school—across different grades, different sports, different events—come together and make this happen,” said Head of School Robert W. Hill III, who, along with his wife, Kathryn, knew Elise very well. “The notion that the kids embraced her memory as widely as they did is amazing. It’s been the ray of sunshine on an otherwise dark cloud of losing such a bright young soul.”