The Place We Call Thacher
Remarks of William J. Dawson IV CdeP 1972 from the Sunday Chapel Service on Family Weekend 2012
Good morning! Thank you, Michael, for your kind introduction and for having confidence in my alleged public speaking skills.
To bring the rest of you up to speed on how I came to stand before you this morning, it started with a mysterious phone call five weeks ago. My iPhone revealed only that the incoming call was from the 805 area code. With a 646 prefix... Uh oh! Clearly, it was Thacher calling. The voice was familiar. The message wasn’t. “Hi, Bill, this is Michael Mulligan.” Pause. “Don’t worry. I’m not calling for the wrong reasons.” Yeah, right! My mind raced through the possible meanings of wrong reasons.
Okay. A quick show of hands among the parents: How many of you immediately would have flashed to Thacher’s honor code and, with rising alarm, speculated as to how your wonderfully moral child could have possibly run afoul of it?
Well, I will confess that even though such a transgression would be totally out of character for my son, Parker, just as it would have been for your children, no other plausible reason came quickly to mind to ease me into believing Michael’s opening line. The head of school doesn’t just make random calls to parents. So, I feared Michael was just being Michael: calm, wise, and measured. I waited for the “not wrong reason” to be revealed.
To my relief, he went on, “Would you speak at the outdoor chapel on Sunday morning of Parents’ Weekend?”
Apparently, Michael had run down a lengthy list of must-hear orators on the rungs of the public speaking ladder: educators, theologians, writers, conservationists, and even humorists. None answered his call. Well, you know those rubber things at the base of ladders that protect your floor? Yup, that’s me.
Last June, Michael convinced me to give the toast at my class’s 40th reunion on the Upper School lawn. It seemed obvious to me while on the phone with him five weeks ago that Michael had clearly forgotten over the summer that I set a record for stumbling my way through the shortest toast of the evening. After all, he was once again asking the bottom of the oratory ladder to stand at a Thacher lectern. Michael explained over the phone that he could think of no other with ties as strong as mine to the school. An exaggeration, to be sure, but I said yes and here we are...
So, I suppose I do have many ties to Thacher. My dad rode his horse down from Marin County to school each year, graduating in 1947. People don’t travel to the school on horseback much anymore.
While I followed in my father’s footsteps, I didn’t ride down to school. Instead, I opted for the comfort, speed and the hot panted stewardesses that made PSA flights to Southern California legendary among Bay Area Thacher boys in the late 60’s and early 70’s, a full decade before the school became enlightened and went coed.
My older son graduated in 2009 and is flourishing as a senior at Bowdoin College in Maine, the same college my first headmaster here, Newt Chase, had attended as a young man. Parker is a Thacher senior with eyes on several liberal arts colleges as he looks to build on his years at this beautiful place.
Six stepsisters and cousins, equally Dawson’s and Eastburn’s, plus a brother-in-law round out my direct familial connections. Suffice it to say, we’re sold on this place.
So, I thought I might spend a few moments this morning telling you why Thacher has such a hold on my family and me. My guess is that we are all similarly tethered to this place we call Thacher. And it is all about this extraordinary school and the life lessons it imparts on those lucky enough to transit the campus.
I mentioned that I gave a short toast at my 40th reunion last June. My words then are useful as a jumping off point. I addressed my fellow classmates, including one who rode his bike over 500 miles down from Ukiah to the school:
We are 40 years removed from the slate walled classrooms;40 years from the neighing of horses at dawn; 40 years from the seemingly relentless challenge to master our lessons; and 40 years from the warm camaraderie of our classmates. And, yet, four principles have endured. Honor. Fairness. Kindness. And truth.
I then touched on physical and ethereal characteristics of the school that so well represent those four words. I’ll come back to each of them in turn. I ended my toast, naturally, with a toast that referenced the Banquet Song sung at formal dinners, something about old Casa Piedra not having faded from our hearts.
I hope we all share a basic appreciation for the definitions of honor, fairness, kindness, and truth. But beyond what Merriam Webster would say, these four words are the four points of Thacher’s moral compass. They have enhanced and enduring meaning here in this special place.
Honor at Thacher goes beyond having a keen sense of ethical behavior, though ethical behavior is the expected norm in this place. Here, honor also means that we take time to honor the school, and particularly its skilled and caring faculty and administration.
David Lavender was a luminous teacher of English during my father’s years here. Likely unbeknownst to his young Thacher students, he was also a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of more than 40 books, many of them seminal histories of the American West, including One Man’s West, which was published in 1943, the same year he (and my dad) started at Thacher.
I had the privilege of being taught algebra by Anson Thacher (Sherman’s son) and AP US History by Fred Lamb. Anson was a gentle bear of a man, a surrogate grandfather to all incoming freshmen, strict, yet warm and loving. I instantly felt at home.
We didn’t just go chapter to chapter through a text book in Mr. Lamb’s class. We listened to Aaron Copeland’s Billy the Kid and read Walt Whitman’s poetry, both evoking our shared time in the outdoors. Mr. Lamb taught us American culture in the context of history more than the other way around.
And, in a generationally transcendent career, Marvin Shagam taught Latin not only to me, but also to my two sons. The three of us came, we translated, and, largely, we conquered. Mr. Shagam taught all of us that the Latin language is not dead; it’s just poorly appreciated.
Fairness here is more than just insisting on the equity of a level playing field in our interactions with others. It is celebrating the fairness of this enchanting valley, these majestic mountains, and this beautiful campus.
I take particular strength from these vistas. They are the same that captivated Sherman Day Thacher when he chose to come west from Yale and found this school in 1889 amidst his 160 acre orange grove in the Eastern end of the Ojai valley. They are the same ones that welcomed my father and his prized palomino horse, as they first rode into the Ojai nearly 70 years ago.
Some buildings, notably the old study hall and the Upper School, have endured through generations. Other parts of the campus has evolved intelligently, with seniors’ shacks that dotted the nearby hills supplanted by the observatory and the Hill Dormitory complex, and with dirt athletic fields that gave us a true home field advantage giving way to the manicured green expanses below us.
The Rough House, a veritable Pantheon of boyhood exuberance, was razed, the victim of failing timbers and perhaps a small measure of respect for our increasingly litigious society. In its place, Thacher now boasts of a modern science facility and countless other spaces that facilitate 21st century learning. New and refurbished dormitories, all fully wired for our digital age, house our students. Faculty housing is now beyond sufficient; it is a recruiting tool to lure the best and brightest teachers here to this place. Sherman Day Thacher would be proud. The school is by all measure fair beyond his dreams.
Kindness here is not just manifested in the overt and quiet ways in which we treat one another with warmth and care. At Thacher, kindness is manifested in the gentle ways horses teach our students humility, patience, and responsibility.
Above all else, the horses are the constant that binds the generations of Thacher’s graduates. All learn to ride – or ride better here. All owe a debt of gratitude to the category of teachers who could never guide a discussion comparing Shakespearean heroes with those in modern literature, who could never qualify for tenure and take sabbaticals, or administer evening check-in at the dorms. And yet these largely silent, four legged teachers of kindness impact Thacher’s students in lasting ways – even if our hindquarters are occasionally sore from sitting astride them for an hour or two beyond our measure.
And what of truth? At Thacher, it is a lot more than arriving at the correct solution to a math problem, more than knowing simple right from wrong. It is the yearning for knowledge that is instilled here at Thacher, seeding an unrelenting, life-long love for learning. It is being a true and constant friend to a classmate in need not of judgment, but of appreciation for the qualities that make her special. And, hardest of all, in the face of judicial council proceedings, truth is instinctively and objectively recounting the actual unfolding of events, regardless of personal consequences. It is putting principal above expedience.
The four points of Thacher’s moral compass are as strong and constant as north, south, east, and west. Honor. Fairness. Kindness. And truth. They are short words, but powerful, life-changing concepts fundamental to a Thacher education.
In retrospect, they are not a bad set of basic tools to take on life’s journey. And good that their deeper meanings are imparted gently, but firmly by this small, college preparatory school nestled at the foot of the Los Padres National Forest in the Ojai Valley.
So, I’ll end my talk this morning as I did my toast last June:
So, I’ll end my talk this morning as I did my toast last June:
Here’s to the indelible stamp of the Thacher School, a remarkable place that touches us all, students and parents, in profound and life bettering ways.
Thank you.
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A college preparatory boarding school for grades 9-12
Notice of nondiscriminatory policy as to students: The Thacher School admits students of any race, color, national, and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national, and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other School-administered programs.