Mollie and Garland Lasater were both born in San Antonio, Texas, six weeks apart in 1938. They each left home as teenagers for the Northeast, Garland to Phillips Andover and Mollie to neighboring Abbot Academy, then on to Princeton and Vassar.

After college, Mollie worked in New York City and Dallas, where she and Garland reconnected while he was in law school and flying as a Marine fighter pilot. They married in September 1964, spent their early years together in San Diego, and then settled in Fort Worth with their two sons, building a life there for the past 60 years. While Garland practiced law, Mollie devoted herself to public education, serving on the Fort Worth School Board for ten years, the last four as president.

In the early 2000s, as they wound down their careers, Mollie and Garland found inspiration in (MS)², Andover’s STEM summer program for first-generation and low-income students, and began imagining something similar in the Roaring Fork Valley. Working with Kevin Ward and Helen Obermeyer, they partnered early on with the Aspen Science Center, and found a home for the program when Jeff Leahy volunteered CRMS as its host.

For the past twenty years, Mollie and Garland have poured themselves into both (HS)² and CRMS: building relationships with students, offering generous financial support, drawing in friends from around the country, and forging partnerships with schools in other cities.

(HS)² would not exist without their vision, partnership, and devotion. We’re forever grateful for the mark they’ve left on (HS)², and through it, on Colorado Rocky Mountain School.

Garland & Mollie Lasater Tribute
By Annie Oppenheim

It has been a great honor of my adult life to get to know and to love Mollie and Garland Lasater. Upon meeting Garland 11 summers ago, I was rigorously questioned about the special sauce of (HS)². We can tell this program is impactful, he told me, but why? This is Garland. He’s not satisfied with just knowing that this program he brought to life has changed lives. He wants to test it, understand it, and make sure the perceived impact is real.

I am in awe of this vigorous curiosity, and it is this quality, paired with Mollie’s warmth, that enabled this duo to make such profound impacts on so many. I’ve been lucky to be in Mollie and Garland’s orbit. They are loving and generous, and they’ve become family to me. But I’m not the only one. Many (HS)² students and alumni feel this way. Over the years, I’ve had so many students reach out for the Lasaters’ contact information so they could write a card or invite Mollie and Garland to a graduation or a wedding. It would be easy to be benefactors of a program like (HS)² and stand on the outside, but that’s not how these two have approached the past twenty summers. They’re eager to know the humans (HS)² serves and to connect them with any opportunities they can. This kindness and generosity is the essence of the Lasaters.

This summer’s motto at (HS)² was to “Live Like Mollie.” It meant leading with kindness and generosity in everything students did, and they took it seriously. That a group of teenagers would choose to spend a summer trying to live up to one woman’s example says everything about the mark she left. Mollie may not be with us this evening, but she is woven into the fabric of this program, and into the twenty years of transformative summers her and Garland’s vision made possible.