One tile for the mosaic of the man

Frederick S. Allis, Jr.

Is difficult to write about Don McLean because he was a many-faceted man. I have, personally, a whole kaleidoscope of memories of him: Don chairing the meeting; Don as a host of a Celtics basketball game in a private box loaned him by a friend; Don as “seigneur” of his Canadian estate; Don concerned about some individual and his problems in the Andover community; Don  as a loyal Amherst alumnus; and Don in his countless other roles that I have only heard about. 

I prefer recall one single quality of his that may provide one tile for the mosaic of the men. Quite by chance I had several opportunities to observe his role as a parent, and I suggest that his achievements in this role, though undramatic when compared with many of his other accomplishments, were equally outstanding. I suppose that some may think it presumptuous of me to write about Don as a parent, it should be one of his children, they might say. On the contrary, I believe that if a relative outsider  could be impressed with Don’s role as a parent, that would argue that his achievement in this area was all the greater. 

The first example of Don's acting as a superior parent that I remember came when his older son, Donny, was ready to go to secondary school. As an Andover graduate and loyal alumnus, Don naturally would have been pleased to have Donnie go to Phillips Academy. But unlike some alumni, he had no desire to ram Donnie down Phillips Academy's throat, nor Phillips Academy down Donnie’s throat. The boy was doing well at junior high school and had reservations about private schools in general. After seeing Phillips Academy, he asked if that was the only school available. Don said no and proceeded to take him to see Deerfield. After his return from Deerfield. Donny told his father that the school had a "homey" quality that he liked and that Mr. Boyden reminded him of his grandfather. Andover had a lot good qualities at the time but it certainly was not "homey". Further discussion convinced Don that Deerfield was the place for his son, and the boy accordingly enrolled there and had a happy and successful secondary school experience. When I consider the number of unhappy experiences that I had as a teacher over the years dealing with alumni sons who had been shoe-horned into Andover against their own wishes or against the schools advice, I give Don top marks for not allowing his own desires to interfere with what proved to be the best secondary education for his son.

I can be much less precise about another example of Don as a good parent because I know about it only from conversations with Don and Martha. This concerned Don’s elder daughter Ruthie who had a severe reading disability - a problem that was not discovered until she was in fifth grade. Don first took her out in public school and sent her to a private one. He told me that he gave his school plenty of time to find a program that would help his daughter - he was always  fastidious about interfering with someone else's operation without solid proof that it was not working - but finally came to the conclusion that the school was not going anywhere with Ruthie. So he went to the Dean of Hunter College for advice. She recommended one-on-one sessions with a gifted psychologist who specialized in children with reading problems. There followed a grinding series of sessions - every Saturday for two years - that meant Don or Martha driving Ruthie to New York, waiting for her for two hours, and then driving her back. This program was followed the next summer buy one at the New York University Reading Institute that involved Don's taking his daughter with him to New York every day for two months. Since the rest of the family were away, the two spent their evenings on vocabulary and sentence structure. Finally, the following winter, came another series of sessions in New York to prepare for the SAT’s. As a result of these demanding programs Ruthie was able to enter Wheelock College, to graduate, and to take up the career she had her heart set on - that of a primary school teacher. Here I was impressed by Don’s determination to overcome a puzzling and challenging problem by devoting an enormous amount of time so as to make possible for his daughter the career she had wanted above all others.

There was a time, however, when I could observe Don's parenting at first hand. This happened when I worked with his younger son John during his first year at Andover. John was affable, outgoing, and relaxed; everyone seemed to like him, and he appeared to have adjusted easily and happily at Andover. But there was one difficulty. Despite his success in other areas, he was having trouble academically, and when things did not improve after two terms, I was invited to see what I could do.

And so it was that during some lovely spring evenings in the early 1960’s John used used to trudge up from Junior House, where he lived, to Ferrar House where I lived. Since my family was charging around on the first floor, John and I used to repair to a second floor bedroom and confer there. As the spring war on, I became very fond of John and actually looked forward to his visits. It soon became clear that John was not stupid; he simply could not bring himself to get something all right. If there were ten forms in the Latin declination, John would get nine right; ditto for five out of six conjugation forms. I tried cajolery, threats, shaming him, and getting moralistic, but John remained as friendly and pleasant as ever. I remember once giving him a drill in reading paragraphs and then giving me the the main thought. John claimed one of them did not have a main thought. I told him that was absurd, that the paragraph had been written by an experienced teacher, and that he should get back on the stick and read more carefully. Eventually he challenged me to find the main thought and I was forced to admit I could not find one either. In fact, I could not find any thought!

While John and I were working together, Don kept his distance. He never interfered or told me what to do. From time to time I would report to him on our progress or lack of it. While he was always interested, again he never interfered. He made it clear that he wanted John held up to exacting standards but that he was not going to disown him if these standards were not immediately met. By the end of the spring we had made some progress but still had a long way to go. I told don that i thought he would have to be patient with John, that he was probably a "late bloomer," but that in time he would make a perfectly satisfactory record. Don accepted my advice, and I was happy to see that my predictions were eventually realized as John graduated from Andover, did a stint in the Marine Corps, graduated from Harvard, and has gone on to have a distinguished career in business. Throughout all this I was impressed by the way Don never let his obviously deeply-felt concern for his son interfere with John's chance to develop on his own.

Martha McLean summed up Don's performance as a parent when she said to me, “Whenever one of the children had a problem, Don dropped everything to deal with it.” I know of few parents about whom such a statement could be made.

Frederic S. Allis was Chairman of the Department of History and Social Sciences at Phillips Academy, Andover, 1969-1979. Longtime member of the Andover faculty, he is the author of “Youth From Every Quarter," the Bicentennial history of the Academy.