Headmaster's Letter to the Deerfield Community
Fall 2002

September 2002

Dear Members of the Deerfield Community:

It will be a long time before any headmaster of any school writes a September letter without thinking about the events of last year and the dreadful circumstances in which the academic year began for our country. I suppose in one way or another we will always be responding to September 11, 2001. Even our attempt at some kind of normalcy was a conscious response, as if to demonstrate that no terrorism was going to shake us out of our well-tested academic routines. We did try to do some things differently. For example, we brought in a number of outside speakers, until it became clear that we had had enough and they were beginning to jostle the very routines that are, in their way, the most comforting when the world outside of the academy will never be quite the same again. One speaker, however, no one will forget. We invited Thomas Von Essen, the now-retired Commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, to be our commencement speaker, to help us bring closure to a year that had begun so terribly. Mr. Von Essen had turned down virtually all of the speaking invitations he received last year, but he did us the honor of accepting ours, thanks to his high regard for Deerfield and to his life-long friendship with our history teacher and varsity football and squash coach, Mike Silipo. The speech he gave, which recalled the heroism of our New York City firefighters and reminded us that we can all find heroism within ourselves just as they did, was as moving as Ronan Tynan's singing to us had been at opening convocation, five days after September 11.

Most of us, God willing, will never know whether we are capable of the kind of heroism that Thom Von Essen told us about. Our purposes in a school like Deerfield seem rather mundane by comparison, and yet that may be exactly the point. For in some infinitesimal and yet important way, cannot Deerfield do something that will help reduce the likelihood that a day like last September 11 will happen again, or (if that is too presumptuous) simply to labor to make the world a better place? Or, at least, to increase international understanding? These may be enormous agenda items, but if we don't think about questions like this, then we are not being faithful to the purposes of Deerfield, or to the man whose centenary we celebrate this year, Frank Boyden.

The sign on the side of the Ephraim Williams House states, "It was in this house, on August 12, 1902, that Mr. Boyden accepted the headmastership of Deerfield." On a quiet summer day, this past August 12, just a month ago, I stood outside the Ephraim Williams House, imagining Mr. Boyden's arrival 100 years earlier. He came by train from Amherst, and was then taken by horse and buggy to Old Deerfield. Mr. Ephraim Williams told Mr. Boyden that his headmastership would surely coincide with the final demise of the school, and their meeting ended. The house looks very much the same, the buttonball trees are still there, and Albany Road as well. But 100 years later the great strength of the school, including its idealism, its democracy, and its commitment to human decency are all the work of Mr. Boyden. So too is Deerfield's internationalism. As we continue to respond, therefore, to the significance of September 11, 2001 in our lives, I cannot help but think that we are also recapitulating the significance of Mr. Boyden to Deerfield. If one event happened a year ago, and another one hundred years ago, they now converge as we think about the year ahead.

Perhaps it is not simply a coincidental convergence. In July, Meera and I and Assistant Headmaster David Pond traveled to Jordan to discuss with His Majesty King Abdullah II, Deerfield Class of 1980, his plan to establish a school exactly like Deerfield in Amman. In one sense, King Abdullah is doing what he can in a post 9/11 world to expand the opportunity for receiving a Western education in the Middle East. But he is also saying that this is something that he would want to do in any case, simply because his own experience at Deerfield had been so strong and had prepared him so well for the offices of life, including that of a ruling monarch. It is the idea of Deerfield, as it has been bequeathed to us by Mr. Boyden, that must always be reasserted, and in this instance, reproduced on grounds specifically set aside for it next to the Raghadan Palace. As we gladly help King Abdullah accomplish his plan, knowing how much it will advance the cause of international understanding, we cannot help but think that it gives us an opportunity as well to re-visit Mr. Boyden and those very important things that he stood for.

We will proceed to do that this year as a way of marking the Boyden centenary. Claudia Lyons, Independence Foundation Chair and Greer Chair holder this past year, will speak to the faculty in early September. Brian Rosborough, founder of Earthwatch and graduate of the Class of 1958, will speak to the whole school at opening convocation on September 15. Our visiting fellows, David and Hilary Matthews (David is the retiring headmaster of Tiger Kloof, a splendid school in South Africa, where he is beheld very much as Mr. Boyden was regarded in the United States) will speak to us later in the fall term. Bob Merriam, Class of 1943, will speak at the Franklin County reception on December 20. On March 6 Peter Esty, Class of 1955, retiring headmaster of Greens Farms Academy, will speak to the faculty. We will select one day during the school year and restructure it so that it resembles, as closely as possible, a typical day in the life of the school fifty years ago. And with our new Dean of Spiritual and Ethical Life, Elizabeth Clement, we will certainly explore ways of fortifying the ethical consciousness of our students, which is surely an important part of Mr. Boyden's thinking about the influence of Deerfield. There can be no greater human quality, and none more important as we imagine the demands of leadership in the world today.

As for our own internationalism, I will cite just two examples of initiatives we have taken since last year. Last spring Mary Ellen Friends, a member of our history faculty, undertook to teach an elective on the history of the Middle East, giving some of our seniors a chance to know this complicated region of the world before they graduated. Now she is planning to work it into her yearlong freshman/sophomore history course, to make it accessible to a greater number of students. Meanwhile, through our affiliation with the Seeds of Peace program, we have admitted a Palestinian boy from Gaza, Mohammed Matar, to Deerfield this year. It is a moment of opportunity-for Mohammed and for us-that reminds me of that time, after the Second World War, when Mr. Boyden wrote to his old Amherst classmate, Count Kabayama in Tokyo, to inquire if his grandson might be interested in Deerfield-an initiative that led to the arrival of Norikazu Kabayama as a new student in 1947, one of the very first to be allowed to leave Japan to study abroad, thereby giving Deerfield a role in the reconstruction of post-war Japanese-American relations.

Mr. Boyden used to close his letters by touching on the timelessness of Deerfield. Here is what he said in the fall of 1957, the year I graduated: "I wish you could all have been with me when I took my customary drive with the horse and buggy around the lower level. It is a thrilling sight to see everyone busy with the sport of their choice, and to know that they will carry with them forever the memories of the New England meadows and hills which are so lovely at this season of the year." In his writing he was a master of the fireside-chat style, which I mention only because it occurs to me that my good friend, Mr. Edward Shanahan, headmaster of Choate-Rosemary Hall, now occasionally posts electronic fireside chats on the Choate website. Will I do this? Perhaps. Would Mr. Boyden have done it if the technology were available to him? No doubt!

As we now begin the 100th year since Mr. Boyden became headmaster of Deerfield in 1902, we salute him, and Mrs. Boyden as well, and we thank them for everything they have meant to us as we enthusiastically embark on our new school year for the 205th time.

Sincerely,
Eric Widmer