Head of School’s Notebook | Dad

December 6, 2018

My father left home for boarding school in the eighth grade, and he was consumed by homesickness. In the late 1940s, student services weren’t what they are now. So my inconsolable father was sent to the infirmary to cry in the relative quiet of his sick bed. At some point, a few days later, my father looked up from his distress to see my grandfather striding into the room. “PopPop,” my brothers and I called him, but my own father at that age called him “Sir.”

PopPop did not have the benefit of a college education, let alone an opportunity to learn in a boarding school, but he had made his way in the world anyway, earned a good living, and fought in two World Wars. He was all about honor and responsibility and at least to his grandchildren, PopPop commanded attention and respect. So when he stood at the end of my father’s bed and asked in a calm, measured tone, “Son, am I going to have to take you home?” My father knew the answer.

“No, Sir.”

He left the infirmary shortly thereafter and ultimately spent five years as a student at the school, earning the highest medal the school bestows at graduation. No doubt my grandfather was there watching, smiling at a journey that began with a whimper but ended with an ovation. Ironically, after college my father, too, chose the military, following in PopPop’s footsteps. But when he got out, it was to boarding schools that Dad gravitated. He tried finance, my grandfather’s profession, but it didn’t take. So instead he took his bride to a small campus in the Northeast corner of Connecticut and Dad became a teacher.

I asked him once if he saw any irony in the fact that he ultimately ran the very schools that initially traumatized his younger self. “No,” he said because boarding school wasn’t about his inauspicious beginning. It was about everything that happened after, when he let go of his fear and worry and found possibility. Just a year ago, he attended his 65th reunion, and though he felt ancient he was happy to point out that there were a few fellows there celebrating their 70th. His relationship with his classmates and his school, he said, is a lifelong joy and commitment.

I think of my father often when I speak to families considering Cate. My own experience with boarding school was equally powerful, though it began a little differently. I was not homesick to start, but I had my share of challenging moments. Occasionally I tell families about those too, for as powerful an experience as boarding school is, it is never easy. Nothing of real value—at least educationally—is anything but hard-won.

I think maybe that’s what PopPop was communicating to my Dad that day in 1949. His words were precise, and so was their meaning. In modern translation, perhaps he was saying, “Are you going to lie there in bed or get up and take advantage of this opportunity?” And that’s an easy question to answer, really, even if it required a good deal of fortitude from my father in that moment.

He knew, though, what was at stake, and he lived up to it. That’s all I have ever seen my father do in his life. And it’s probably why I do what he does. The fact that it wasn’t all smooth sailing along the way only makes his resolve seem more impressive and his story more human and credible.

Our parents teach us all kinds of things, I suppose, and some of those lessons come from before they are even parents. Don’t think I didn’t tell myself the tale of Dad’s challenging beginning countless times through my own boarding school experience and thereafter. And each time I smile, finding in my Dad’s willingness to persevere the measure of a boy who would become a remarkable man.

PopPop, you see, isn’t the only one in the family who is proud of my father.