Senior of the Week: Sam Gallagher
By Jane Park
History enthusiast, devoted Christian and senior Sam Gallagher began his journey at the Academy by mere coincidence. “I'm from the West Coast in Washington...boarding schools like Exeter don't really exist there,” Gallagher said. “I'd never heard of them actually until my sophomore year of high school, where I received a letter for a pre-college program, which I misinterpreted as a boarding school. And I didn't know what it was, so I researched it and I found out about Exeter and other boarding schools like it. I convinced my parents to let me apply, and I was the first kid in my entire region to go to a boarding school.”
As a new upper, Gallagher felt pressure to acclimate Exeter’s community and culture. “I had to be really outgoing when I first arrived because there were only seven other new uppers along with me. It was really hard to get to know people or join a group of friends at first,” he said.
Soon, however, he found a sense of belonging and community. “I myself had to be quite assertive in going to people in my dorm and saying ‘Hi, Can I get lunch with you?’ until I just found a group of people that I consistently had lunch and hung out with,” Gallagher said. “And then over time, that developed into my friend group.”
Senior Stephen McNulty recalled his first encounter with Gallagher. “I met Sam in Knight House when he first arrived….I think one of the first things you notice is that he's always wearing a floral shirt which kind of speaks to his disposition. He has a spunk and a fire-like personality,” McNulty said.
Long before he came to Exeter, one of the most important aspects of Gallagher’s life was his connection to church. “Island Vineyard Community Church was my family's church. Both my parents are pastors, [and] my dad was the lead pastor of our church,” Gallagher said. “It was just my entire childhood. I went to regional conferences and national conferences for pastors. I was on our worship team. I did a lot of the work for the church whenever we moved buildings, I helped renovate…[The church] very much dominated my life.
When his church shut down his freshman year of high school, Gallagher was forced to ask several critical questions and reflect on the role of religion in his life “My personal spiritual journey was very much in question with, ‘well, now that my family's church has gone, like where do I go?’” he recalled.
“What was really interesting was that despite being a pastor's child, I found myself relatively uneducated on the theology that I was raised in. For instance, the Vineyard Denomination, which is what our church was under, is against gay marriage,” he said. “I didn't even know that, and I [wondered], how can I, a gay person, have been in this kind of church for so many years and never really looked into the theology of the national denomination?”
Gallagher spoke to the impacts of his old church on his life. “It was sad, but it's also a reckoning moment for my own self-awareness...My Meditation is structured as a letter to the church; it was really the only thing I could write about. It was a way for me to almost make peace with the history I had with the church, with religion in general, with my spiritual journey, with my queerness and then with my family, because those were all deeply intertwined,” he said.
In his Meditation, Gallagher wrote, “You were my church, and we did service in my home, so the two concepts became inseparable. You became the warmth that greeted me each day, and helped me close my eyes in the dark. I remember how you were my comfort.”
Despite the church’s integral role in Gallagher’s life, he felt unwelcome at times because of his identity. “I remember feeling sick to my stomach, tired of listening to yet another person tell me how fundamentally I was flawed–how I was fundamentally living in sin,” he wrote. Later in his Meditation, however, Gallagher came to understand how his place in the church could go beyond a single congregation.
McNulty appreciated the effort Gallagher puts into discerning his worldview. “You know when a person has done particularly a lot of work thinking. Think about his faith: the way he talks about service, he has a very intimate understanding of that on a personal level. I think that takes a bit of a journey of soul-searching that he's gone under,” McNulty said.
Senior Jaekeb Harper also immensely appreciates the conversations that he has had with Gallagher. “Sam is one of the most genuine and thoughtful people I've ever met. Many of my favorite memories of him are us staying up incredibly late talking about politics, sexuality, religion, culture and much more.”
Math Instructor and Gallagher’s adviser David Huoppi applauded Gallagher’s work ethic and embracing spirit. “I like that Sam is friendly and hard-working in his classes. He only had two years at Exeter, but has gotten a lot out of those two years,” Huoppi said. “He is a well-rounded Exonian.”
According to Huoppi, Gallagher exemplifies a certain drive and responsibility in the way Gallagher approaches academics. “He’s helped me by making my job as adviser and dorm head easier because I know that I don’t have to worry about Sam missing classes frequently or getting behind in his school work. I can count on him to make good choices and set a good example for his peers,” Huoppi noted.
In Gallagher’s upper year, his courses inspired him to dive deeper into his identity. The three-term US History sequence specifically sparked a deep interest in the subject of history. “I was really fascinated by religious history, just because I have a long history with the church, [and] with my family. And so for my 331 paper, I was looking at the spread of Protestant Protestantism in the Colonial Era…it really fascinated me.”
This year, Gallagher dove even deeper into his bent for history and religion. “I took a course this fall on the Holocaust [called] Human Capacity for Good and Evil. And then this winter on slavery and capitalism. And now I'm taking a course on law and another about genocide in the modern world,” he said. “These kinds of history courses are relatively narrow, but offer a really insightful view of a specific topic.”
Gallagher’s connection to religion has not only helped in his coursework, but has also opened a door to the profession he plans on pursuing. “I knew that I wanted to pursue law [since] early high school and that's specifically because of the work I did with my family's church,” Gallagher said. “We worked a lot with homeless youth...I would, all the time, encounter youth poverty, youth in addiction or youth facing several different types of abusive situations, and so we ended up turning my house into a shelter for homeless youth.”
Gallagher finds his passion for law and policy in its power to progress social justice for disadvantaged people. “One of the pieces of inspiration for me is that there's a piece of law called the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act,” a federal law which provides funding for homeless shelter programs, Gallagher said. “It seemed like that type of legislation used to help the people which really made me say, ‘This is what I want to do.’ So ever since then, especially going into high school with more self-awareness in general, I realized that I wanted to pursue law in a sense that I wanted to pursue civil protections for people and pursue legislation that could help people.”
Gallagher’s Meditation braids together his devout faith and dedication to social justice. He wrote, “I know what justice should look like. And that justice began when we gave [people] a warm meal, a house to call home when they needed it, and community that was there...That is what I believe is your purpose...how you make the world a better place.”
Gallagher, as an aspiring lawyer, seeks to grow empathy for people in situations where the law would come into use. “If you’re thinking about it, the best thing you can do is to grow an education for yourself and grow empathy for people in those situations,” he noted.
McNulty reflected on Gallagher’s invaluable friendship, speaking to how Gallagher would always help console him on all his worries and problems. “I have problem X, and he always supports me and is like, you'll get through it. It's okay. I think he does a very good job at giving space for the emotions people have and listening to people, and he also does a good job of offering advice and offering to help out and be there for people,” McNulty said. “He wants to help you be there for yourself, and I think those are remarkable traits.”
Harper agreed. “Sam can be quiet, incredibly dedicated to his work, but is intensely passionate. His unique background for an Exonian makes him absolutely wonderful to talk to, with incredibly deep and nuanced ideas and opinions.”
Gallagher is known to all of his friends as an empathetic and kind listener, an identity that has characterized his time at Exeter. “One of his best traits as a friend is that he wants to be there for you, but he also wants to help you be there for yourself and practice self -are amid the stresses of Exeter,” McNulty said. “He has a very clear vision of, ‘You do not have to do everything all in one day and that's okay.’”
