Trusteeship…and paying your dues

John U. Monro

In the workaday life of a school or college, trustees are somehow always in the background, behind the scene, dimly perceived by faculty and students, shadowy transient figures that come and go. But trustees can make an enormous difference for good or ill. Trustees decide who will be headmaster or president, and having chosen a head they will back him up in developing and changing the program, monitor closely how things are going, counsel and steer him through major decisions, take issue or urge caution, approve, or suggest other ways to proceed. Trustees are responsible for the hard, detailed work of finances, for helping shape and monitor the budget, and for deciding upon and conducting major fun drives. In days of rapid social, fiscal, and political changes such as our last three decades, trustees, representing the world outside, must bring their outside knowledge to bear on the work and plans of the institution. On major issues trustees, like any strong-minded people, will disagree, often sharply, but for the good of the school they must work together to find consensus on which all can cheerfully agree.

There is no pay for any of this trustee work; It is done out of concern for the institution involved, “non sibi” as our school motto has it. The fact is that trustees are expected to give not only of their time and knowledge, but also of their own substance as a good example to others. And, I have learned over the years there is another element beyond “non sibi" that makes for a good board of trustees, and that is the inspiration one gets from being members of a good team, a successful team that works well together in a worthwhile and demanding institutional effort. Being a member of a great team in a tough game is a rare and ultimately rewarding experience, a joy. 

Donald H McLean was my great mentor and teacher in these matters. He had his own translation of “non sibi” which has haunted and effected my life for thirty years. The way Don put it was, “You pay your dues, meaning each of us owes an enormous debt to the people and institutions that helped to shape us, that we still inhabit and depend on everyday of our lives; and we must never in our time forget to “pay our dues." The value of Don McLean's definition for me, and I expect for others, is that it puts a rational and compelling reason to build the old Latin saw “non sibi" into one's life. It was part of Don McLean's genius to think through complicated ethical and operational problems and translate his conclusions into pithy, workable, earthly metaphors.

I can only begin to sketch here the major elements of change over the past thirty years at Andover in which Donald McLean had a leading role. These were years, as historian Fritz Allis has observed, when Andover "underwent more basic changes then in all its previous history."

Early in his long tenure as Headmaster, John Kemper decided it would add enormously to the strength of the school to build a significant alumni organization and involve its members in the critical business of observing school activities and policies, and giving the management advice. The decision was a major turning point in Andover affairs, and the 1950’s Donald McLean became a leading champion of the plan, one of the first presidents of the new Alumni Council. He and I joined the Charter Trustee group together in 1958 and set together in the far-end freshman seats. I remember well his enthusiasm at the opportunity of bringing new, younger alumni ideas and influence to bear on the Board’s business

Almost at once the board asked Don McLean to direct the huge Andover Program Fund Drive for $7 million to help John Kemper build the new Andover he had in mind, – the new dormitories around Rabbit Pond, the new Evans Science Building, and the Arts and Communication Center linking the museum and the stage in George Washington Hall. The campaign was a demanding three year effort of planning, organizing, and execution, and its success set Andover on its new course for this half-century. I remember that Tim Ireland was McLean's major partner in the alumni section of the drive, and Fred Stott was the key staff person; but Don McLean was the Chief Executive Officer and the chief hitman. And he saw to it that we all “hauled up our socks" and “paid our dues."

In the late 1960’s John Kemper developed two main issues that produced sharp divisions within the Board. He wanted Andover to be out front in joint efforts of the independent schools to provide educational opportunities for black students, and for Andover to direct its own admissions efforts to admit more black students. There were serious reservations within the Board about this proposal, - reservations that the program would be costly, and that it might well bring about a lowering of the schools traditionally high academic standards. That the Board finally reached a consensus to improve and encourage the program owed a great deal to Donald McLean's ability in human relations and one-on-one persuasion.

The most critical division within the board in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s rose on the issue of merging with Abbott Academy. By then the evidence was fairly clear that Andover would follow the national trend and go co-ed. The Abbott trustees could since this possibility for Phillips Academy also, and could foresee the problem such a move would create for Abbott, our neighbor down School Street. Informal conversations began, and John Kemper arrived at the firm conviction that the decent, honorable, gentlemanly course was not the fairly simple one of starting to admit girls to Andover, but the more complex and expensive course of working out a merger between the two schools, thus preserving as much as possible of the identity and tradition of Abbott Academy. Serious members of the board saw no good reason for the merger: it would be a heavy expense on Ancover’s resources, in legal fees and commitments; buildings would require renovation; there would be entanglements of contracts to teachers and staff; and we were under absolutely no legal commitment to Abbott Academy. They saw it as a violation of our fiscal responsibilities as trustees to take on an unnecessary financial and legal burden.

Donald McLean became President of the Board in 1968 and the Abbott issue was certainly the most divisive, difficult, and threatening problem he faced in his new term of responsibility. We did not know it then, but John Kemper had three years to live, and for much of the time he was in failing health. The Board’s division was not resolved; in fact, it hardened, though there was obvious pressure to reach a decision as soon as possible. Donald McLean supported John Kemper’s view, but needed a Board consensus; so the discussions went on, but the vote was postponed, deferred, put off. After John Kemper died, the disagreement and postponements went on for yet another year during Simeon Hyde’s interim tour as Acting Headmaster. 

Meanwhile we looked for a new Headmaster and in 1972 appointed Ted Sizer. His first task was to resolve the Abbott merger  problem, and he set about it with directness, energy, and sense. In his first meeting with us In July 1972, a special meeting of the Board, Sizer stated that it was his clear preference that coeducation be achieved by merging with Abbott. He further crisply outlined a series of steps to be followed which would complete the merger within a year. This intelligent, confident, evaluation was evidently the voice we had all been waiting for. We looked at one another, in relief. Nobody in the room was of a mind to tell this new this able new young Headmaster “no" to his first proposal. So Donald McLean then and there put the question and got the unanimous vote he had waited three years for.

When we acknowledge and cheer the result, we need to remember who it was that kept the issue alive through three agonizing years, who set up the search committee that found in nominated Ted Sizer, who briefed Sizer on the tangled ins and outs of the Abbott issue, and who scheduled a special July meeting so that we could settle the matter, and " get along with it." The happy scenario did not happen by accident. It took a lot of hard thought, and sense, and courage, and doing. And Donald McLean did it.

We all tend to think of Ted Sizer’s nine years at Andover as "glory" years in the life of the school, years of the successful transition to coeducation for student body, faculty, and staff, and with that the incredible transformation of a tough, old, male school; years of the extraordinary Bicentennial Celebration, and it's $52 million fund raising effort; years of an unimaginable expansion of course offerings that would be of interest to both faculty and students; years of academic explorations with short term institutes for high school students and the model M S Squared program for minority students to help them prepare for college; culminating in the selection of Donald and Bridget McNemar to step in confidently and well to carry forward the good work. 

Sizer years, to be sure, but to me these the great years of Sizer and McLean: the Headmaster with an educated genius for working with adolescents, gifted teacher and administrator, with a brisk style of intelligent, infectious, competent optimism; a Headmaster backed up at every turn, advised, prodded, cautioned, encouraged, and supported by the President of the Board, who was a superb judge of people and situations, who kept in touch day in and day out, issue after issue, with his fellow members of the Board, who knew how to state the issue before us, when to put the issue and when to delay it, and finally who somehow knew how to pull the Board of Trustees together as a team, a successful team in the great" worthy" enterprise, a joy to belong to and serve.

Donald McLean gave each of us a living model of what it means to "pay our dues."

John U. Monroe has been a trustee of Phillips Academy since 1957. A writer and educator he was Dean of Harvard College until 1967. Since then he has taught at Miles College and Tougaloo College. He has received honorary degrees from 12 colleges and universities.