Up until late August, 2024, eighteen year old Django Grace lived his whole life on Williams Street in Brattleboro with his parents Zak Grace, his mother Jana Zeller and his younger brother Desi (who, like Django, will graduate from BUHS). Django graduated in June of this year, giving a heartfelt and dramatic graduation address to his class and families.
Django is now a freshman at Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri. In early September, as part of the orientation programming for the freshman class, he and his whole class went to the top of the 630’ memorial arch as part of freshman orientation. This iconic steel arch, designed as a gateway to The West, was designed by the great Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen who envisioned the arch in the sixties by noting the shape of a long chain held by two people drooping to the ground who were standing perhaps 6’-8’ apart – he inverted that shape; construction began in 1963 to form his “Gateway to the West” in St. Louis.
Django, like his classmates from across the country and beyond, was in one of the visitors “capsules” ascending the tubular channel within the arc to the top. There views of The West stretched out in front of him. He especially loved the ride up; he found the view flat and dusty, uninspiring, the river muddy, he noted. He looked out realizing he was not seeing the green, hilly Vermont he grew up in. But at the same time he felt launched in his new life.
He was born at Brattleboro Hospital on January 26, 2006 at 5:00 PM and lived on Williams Street from that day on. His father, Zak Grace, is from Shrewsbury, VT; his mom, Jana Zeller, was born in Germany, daughter of Inez Zeller-Bass who with her husband Eric Bass, founded Sandglass Puppets in Putney decades ago - international puppeteers who have performed in 30 countries.
Zack grew up in a conscious, artistic family and community: his father is a glass blower and larger-than-life pupper maker. Jana has a repertoire of adult puppet shows, works with her parents. The sign on the fence of their Williams Street home reads, “Water is Life.”
Zack attended The Neighborhood School at age four, kindergarten at The Academy Street School and then went to Hilltop Montessori for middle school. “Hilltop was very important to me,” he told this writer. “Until then education was about having to do it. But as I became more conscious as a student when Paul Dedell, a teacher at Hilltop, encouraged me to research, to learn more about, to discuss an interests I had, especially in global warming. I was blown away. I could be a researcher! I presented my research in 6th grade.
“My education over three years there was rigorous and gathered around deeply rooted issues in our society. I faced ugly as well as beautiful truths. I learned how to read and write. I became conscious.
“ I then went on to BUHS and loved it. Hilltop was a bubble where I learned how to negotiate the real world, and then BUHS WAS that real world. I made friends I would die for: Quinn Forchion, Ben Berg, Oliver Herrick, Alexandra Gregory, Simon Atkinson, Nate Domina…..
“I studied AP US History there and Law in American Society, wrote in great English classes and studied environmental sciences under Michael Auerbach. That was a really good class. I had room to explore what facets of the subject I was interested in.
“I founded a group we called Peace Jam, the goal of which was to link our group with Nobel Peace Winners. Jodi Williams from Putney came to talk with us about her anti-land-mine work. Chuck Collins came to talk about income inequality. And just last year we created a bike drive whereby people gave us their unused bicycles. We saw to repairing them in Dr. Rebecca Jones’s garage that had been The Rustic Rooster Restaurant across from the firehouse. We provided 33 people in need of a bike with a working one in June, 2024 - from a 4 year old to a guy in his sixties.
“But the life changer was The New England Youth Theater summer camp which I started when I was seven. I played the Curtain Boy, the tiniest role in a production of “Flora and the Flower Shop.” There I got to know and learn from Stephen Stearns, the director and founder of NEYT. He became my mentor…. two shows a year with lots of clowning. That’s when I learned not to take myself too seriously. Then we worked to perform bigger shows like the follow-up to Fiddler on the Roof or Mary Poppins, As You like It and Italian Commedia del Arte shows. – that is, shows in the senior company. Theater is where people go to be changed. I learned a lot about who I am and what theater is.
“But I was apologetic about my place in theater and felt I didn’t have friends who understood. At the same time I was on the lacrosse team (I also played soccer, both for four years) at BUHS and I didn’t want my fellow players to know I was acting in theater productions. I was caught between two worlds. One night I went out on stage in a comedic role and immediately saw most of the lacrosse team in the audience. At first I was mortified. They had found me out. But then I just said to myself, “Well, I just have to go for it.” When I heard them laughing like crazy at my jokes on stage, I knew the stigma I had created in myself was obsolete.
‘Now, here I am in St Louis studying political science with a focus on climate change as well as taking a class on American politics - a crash course on how laws get made and how the system works - as well as a crash course on Environmental Policy and one acting class with staged readings. I’m surrounded by motivated people like me who are excited to be here.
“And when I look back at my years in Brattleboro, I realize Brattleboro is ALIVE, maybe even more than I realized. But I had to leave to make my next chapter in my life happen, but I also know I have to go back. There is nothing in the world more important to me than to be a part of my family.”
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.