Donald H. McLean, Jr: 

as we knew him

Introduction

Frederic A. Stott

On September 16, 1984 in the Cochran Chapel at Phillips Academy, Andover, Theodore R Sizer spoke at the memorial service for Donald H McLean, Jr. concluding, “We were the beneficiaries of the loyalty of a profoundly worthy man." These words, multiplied by those of countless others raised the idea - could we put together the McLean story? would it be worthy?… And, would be readable?

A cautious approach was in order. An often use McLean dictum came to mind, "assemble the facts and they lead you to a sensible conclusion." So I did some assembling, in this case, opinions. Then Martha McLean and her son John offered suggestions as to both topics and authors. The idea of a book held fast, and grew. So did the list of possible authors. And so did my desire to attempt it. Now on a warm May day in 1986, the idea nears reality, and the answers to the question of  “why this book?" are several.

The first reason is that twenty-four different men and women were invited to contribute. Everyone accepted. 

The second is that few men have served society so well in so many different settings. As this informal record unfolds on the pages which follow, it is clear that Donald H McLean Jr. was a generalist of the first order. His intelligence, his training, his sensitivity, his toughness, his principles, his fine judgement, and his enormous inner wish to advance society all combined to make him effective in an incredible array of circumstances.

Don did not start as a generalist. His early years with Milbank, Tweed, after Yale Law School, could easily have been the beginning of a typical successful lawyer’s career  but then came World War II. During those years, people and institutions kept "finding" Don, seeking his counsel and his help. They were many - starting with Gen. Lucius D. Clay and Gen. John Hilldring; later Secretary of State George C Marshall… several educational institutions including Andover, Harvard, and Amherst; medical centers - the Leahy Clinic; the Cleveland Clinic; Overlook Hospital; unusual causes such is the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey or an international gathering of psychiatrists in Dromoland Castle, Ireland. Even the investment firm of Massachusetts Financial Services in Boston was included. Perhaps, above all, there was John D Rockefeller, 3rd. He found Don too, and had the wisdom to involve him in a far-flung series of ventures in Japan, the Philippines, and India, as well as in the United States.

Don found people as well. In each of the episodes recounted here, it is clear that a partnership existed between the author and Don McLean. It is also clear that there were problems to solve, causes - good sensible human causes - to advance. There were and they did. In the process friendships were formed and knowledge was shared, not only about the situation at hand, but about numerous other endeavors which were all part of the man, his experience, and his accumulating wisdom.

There is a another reason for this volume. As several of the authors state, Don McLean had a deep affection for Andover. Cliff Wharton underscores it with a single phrase, “His beloved Andover."

There'll be an appropriate room bearing McLean’s name in the soon to be renovated Andover library.  In that room there will be copies of this volume. Therefore the hope exists that two or three or four, perhaps even more, of the students who see this book will be moved by these tails to try to advance social ideas or enterprises in a similar manner.

Finally there is a personal reason. I first met Don in 1956 when he joined the Andover Alumni Council. We worked at that, at fundraising, at finding headmasters, at many of the issues which faced him as President of the Board of Trustees. Worked is the right word. Some play too, but always in the context of our common project. I felt very much the older son or the younger brother. Don could be demanding, even steely, and we did fall out on two or three occasions. But we worked back into harness. It was always more important to "get on with it" than to worry about a differing of opinion. He was in truth my mentor and the lessons learned from and with him have shaped many a personal decision.

So during the 30 years of our association I got to "know" many others with whom he had worked - Matsumoto and Deshmukh, Van de Veld and Mosher, Fenske and Abreu and Ravenholt, Palmer and Bowie, Minton and Wharton and many many others. (Almost always it was by the last name only. Only a handful escaped. Moore was always "John Moore”.  Andover trustee Summer Smith was always "Summer Smith". But these were practically the only ones to carry their full name.)

A reading of Sizer or Monroe or the Trustee Resolution or Cooper or Ireland will bear witness to this Andover record. As I wrote in the Andover Bulletin:

Donald H McLean , Jr. was at the center of all policy decisions during the troubling period in the late 60s and early 70s when student unrest was at its height, when Headmaster John Kemper’s fine leadership ended with his death, when acting Headmaster Simeon Hyde, Jr. courageously pushed and pulled the school to through a hectic year of transition, when a new headmaster was urgently sought and Theodore R Sizer was fortunately found. 

These were stressful uncertain years. like the Great Depression, you had to live through them in order to appreciate the tension which existed within and among faculty, students, Trustees, staff, alumni, and parents, let alone the community and the nation. Confidence in management was at a low ebb. It was far easier to clamor than to lead, and people clamored. For the newly elected President of the Board of Trustees it was a stern test.

From that period of trial emerged a stronger Andover. Headmaster Sizer, with Donald McLean at his side, let the Academy through an upswing remarkable by any set of measurements - student applications, faculty recruitment and compensation, student skills evident in the classroom or onstage, the introduction of coeducation with the merger with Abbott Academy, funds contributed in record amounts through the Bicentennial Campaign, and morale steadily on rise in all quarters.

I therefore wanted to tie the Andover record in with many of the other McLean ventures in order to show a reasonably complete whole.

There are two other thoughts to include here.

Any description of Don McLean must also record some of the phrases which were oft-used favorite tools. There were many:

"What is needed is a good staff study."

"Let's established the terms of reference."

"He'll just have to pull up his socks." 

“He’s the the sort of person you can count on when it's snowing outside.”

"Tall elms and green grass.”

"Assemble the facts and they lead you to a successful conclusion.”

“A leader must be able to respond to the reasonable questions of reasonable men women.”

“If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said."

“What man can conceive, man can achieve."

And, at the end of discussion or debate, there was his usual exhortation,

"Let's get on with it."

Good tools they were, used often and well.

Finally, a very special part of working with Don was the informal invitation to be part of his family. Ken Matsumoto has spoken for all of us in his lovely personal essay, ed"Uncle Don." Fritz Allis shows another dimension of the McLean family in his piece, “One tile for the mosaic of the man."

For me 30 years of family friendship with Martha, Donny, Ruthie, John, and Barbie adds a compelling reason for this book. Scatter geographically now from Andover, Massachusetts to Silverton, Oregon, from Portland, Maine to Lincoln, Massachusetts, to Denver, Colorado, they offer a friendship and family unity which is wondrous to witness, even more pleasing to enjoy. Good humored also. They have always been a major part of the McLean story.

For these reasons, therefore, I aimed to tell the story of a uniquely constructive man. Twenty-four men and women have told it.

———————-

In the gathering of these tales I am grateful to many people. First of all to the authors, each of whom responded both to the initial request and often to additional desires for further material or changed emphasis. Humorous moments have been part of this gathering such as the telephone call from John Moore relating the hilarious story of the international psychiatrist in the Irish pub, which tale John put on paper. Or the 3 AM telephone call from Ken Matsumoto in Tokyo who forgot all about the time differential and wanted to be sure I knew his contribution was enroute. Moreover Jim Burke has added a unique touch with his gently good-humored account of a "special" institution at work and play!

Edith S Myers, Don’s secretary who went with him from Socony Mobil to the Rockefeller offices in room 5600, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, has shared many a thought and memory as she always shared her great and quiet skills for all of the McLean projects and people. Not only did she render personal advice, but she has added perspective about the important home office support for many Rockefeller-McLean projects. And she has proofread all these pages.

Arthur Palmer is in another to whom I owe a special gratitude. As a personal undertaking he has gone through many of Don McLean's files, pointed out the important steps taken, and somehow managed to bring together the central elements of Don's widespread World War II service in his essay.

Several individuals in the Andover Office of Academy Resources have made special contributions. Pat Edmonds has known the McLeans for several years and worked with Martha on at least one common project and with me on this book; Joe Mesics became Secretary of the Academy shortly before Don's death, but only after being interviewed by Don; Ann Parks has provided her usual high-quality service in the graphic design of this book; Christine Pool who for years deciphered both me and my penmanship as my secretary has put the entire volume through her typewriter and word processor.

Then there are the Trustees of Phillips Academy. Early in the contemplation of this book, I raised the question of how it might be published and by whom. Without hesitation, Trustee President  Mel Chapin, Senior Trustee Tim Ireland, and Headmaster Don McNemar told me to go to work. It was a generous admonition, and both the tone and the substance were pure McLean advice, "Let's get on with it." It has been a very pleasant mission! 

Beyond what I have already said about Martha there is a special appreciation I feel for her partnership in moving this volume from mere idea to tangible reality. More than anyone else, she identified the areas of Don’s greater interest and the people who could tell all of them. As the contributions arrived I shared them with her, and she displayed wonderful objectivity in leaving the editing to me while at the same time making coaching comments about the flavor or the facts of a given situation.

Finally a word about Fritz Allis. He has really been co-editor. He has read every manuscript, carried out a significant amount of editorial improvement, monitored my grammar, and provided the finest sort of balance. In order to pull these many threads together, I isolated myself for three days in our house and New Hampshire's White Mountains. Time and again I smiled at Fritz’s penned editorial directives, even twice turn to talk or laugh with him about particular points. A professional historian who has both personal feelings for our subject and professional objectivity in the ordering of these papers. In short, a friend.

Now, on with the story.

Frederic A. Stott

Andover Massachusetts

May 1986

Frederick a Stott, Andover, Massachusetts, was closely associated with Don McLean in all his Phillips Academy work 1956 to 1981.

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.

He gloried in the tactics of a worthwhile cause

Theodore R. Sizer

“Meet me at the Club,” he’d say; and a luncheon date and time would be set. Earlier, when Don was at the Lahey Clinic in Boston, the “Club” had in fact been Joseph’s Restaurant, on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Streets. Later it was the Andover Inn.

A splash of wine would start it off, and stories. About General Lucius D. Clay for whom Don worked after the War and whom he admired more than any other man. Or about the Ramon Magsaysay awards that he had engineered in the Philippines. Or about the politics of Massachusetts medicine. Whatever the intended agenda, institutional or personal, it would come out gradually, Don sensing just when to get on with that particular business. The talk would be easy, but direct, with Don’s Yale Law School and Millbank, Tweed training creeping out with apt questions, always interspersed with more anecdotes. Henry Stimson. Amherst College fraternities. Potton, the McLean sanctuary in Quebec. Agriculture and population policy in the Third World. Doshisha University and Otis Cary. The Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, John Kemper.

Then more questions. What will happen if…? Do we know enough about…? Have you checked this with Mel and Tim? Is Fred doing a study on that? By desert, the questions would merge into advice, and the language used was plain, even tart. They can’t do that because it’s unworthy. He’ll just have to pull his socks up. Don’t take a lead of first until you know where second base is.

The issues would take form, but their specifics were left deliberately dangling. Don gave his lunch mate the gratification of the final summary. Then Henry would bring coffee, and more stories would follow. And always there was the warm expectation of another luncheon soon at the Club.

Donald Holman McLean, JR. Son of a Congressman and Judge, he cared about getting things done. Weather the matter was as subtile as delineating the functions of an occidental International Hose in an oriental land or as politically Byzantine as moving a large medical facility from one city to another, Don gloried in the tactics of a worthwhile cause. Careful control of the facts was part of it; he learned well the virtues of thorough staff studies in his years of association with John D. Rockefeller, 3rd.

Knowing the people involved was equally critical. Don cared passionately for institutions, but he knew well that they were at their center both a cluster of ideas and a congeries of people, and that institutional decisions would ultimately be made by those peoples’ hearts as well as heads. One needed to know how others felt as well as thought.

Timing was also crucial in McLean’s repertoire. He knew when it was time to do a year’s work in a month, or let what appeared to be a simple issue marinate for weeks, off to the side even if not forgotten.

These tactics were but a means, of course. The ends were the key. Support of the institutions which were the focus of Don’s life became (albeit in a strongly secular sense) a holy purpose. No institution was holier than that of family, and while Don kept his privacy here, his friends readily sensed his intense commitment to wife, children, and grandchildren, to roots, to obligations. His marriage with Martha - two vivid personalities in serene and secure joining - was very special. However family customs may shift in our culture, the loyal vitality lived out by Don and Martha expresses humanity at its best. 

Don’s loyalty and persistent persuasiveness affected other institutions too. Some were primarily ideas, such as a worthy American role in postwar Germany and a philanthropy that served a global public interest. Others were formal entities as well as ideas - the Lahey Clinic, Amherst College, Phillips Academy.

No person could care more for the place where we now gather than did Don. He cared enough for Andover to change it, to change its form while he protected it substance, the ideas at its core. The founders ideology - a "free, public school or academy," and especially that imbedded in the Paul Revere motto, “non sibi,” - was the constant. Don't felt that the true loyalist obligation was to fashion and refashion a contemporary expression of an enduring, noble ideology. In many ways Don's memories, his history, shaped his character. He talked often of the past, and especially of the men and women who had moved him. But he never became their prisoners. 

And so we hope it will be for us, Don McLean’s lunch mates, his friends and family. His nicely balanced mixture of well-defined ends and carefully crafted means and his witness to loyalty - loyalty whose restless quality was a virtue - he touched us greatly. For us he was a great man. He had Lucius Clay; we have Don to claim.

He'll be uneasy with that word “great," though. To him it would sound too rigid, too Napoleonic. The better word which crap most often across the lunch table was the term "worthy." A worthy idea. A worthy person, someone up to the standard of the idea to which loyalty was expected. Don would have us be worthy, and our lives were changed because we wanted him to find us worthy. We knew, at those lunch table talks and elsewhere, that we were the beneficiaries of the loyalty of the profoundly worthy man.

Theodore R Sizer was headmaster a Phillips Academy in the 1970s. He had been Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Chairman of a" Study of High Schools," and the author of numerous articles and books.

A Resolution

Trustees of Phillips Academy

Be it resolved that the Trustees record their deep respect for the leadership, the wisdom, and the unswerving loyalty of Donald H McLean Jr. Graduate of Phillips Academy, Special Assistant to General Lucius D. Clay in the military occupation of Germany after World War II, counselor to John D Rockefeller, 3rd, and leader of the Lahey Clinic, he also fashioned a distinctive career as an Andover alumnus,  Alumni Councillor, campaign chairman, trustee, and President of the Board of Trustees. It is the latter role which we would address in this resolution.

He treated this body and its individual members with equal parts of serious respect and good humor. He thought of us as the members of a club, a club whose sole duty was the discharge of trusteeship in an intelligent, conscientious, and consistent manner. But it was a club whose responsibilities included pleasure along with duty - the pleasure of friendship, the pleasure of place, the pleasure of the Andover Inn as Trustee "territory", the pleasure of come camaraderie cum responsibility.

For each of us he had a word, a quick comment, a smile or a stern gaze (often both), a thoughtful query, usually ending with a hearty “let's get on with it!".

For each of us he had a name, invariably the last name. It was always Ireland, Meyer, Gage, Monro, Gelb, Stevens, Cooper, Kimball, Allen, Piel, Sizer, Chapin, Boeschenstein et al. The only one who escaped was Sumner Smith who either carried both his names or simply “Sumner". "Smith" alone lack proper identity!

We had our mission: to oversee the management of Phillips Academy; to select its leader with the utmost care, and then to back that leader under all conditions; to invest wisely in the schools material resources of money, buildings and land; to contribute generously our time, assets, and judgment; and finally to select successor trustees with the same care exercised in the selection of the headmaster. We recall with a smile his great pleasure when Mssrs. Beinecke and Wyman were elected, the final two during his time as president.

Process was important to him. Split votes were contrary to the basic trustee premise of loyalty to Academy and headmaster. Not that this body lacked for strongly held opinions often at variance with each other. But, such occasions called for patience, for taking out the issue in public and private, for seeking and securing consensus… and then for the casting of the vote.

Finally there was the test of trustee fibre. Don often described a good person as "someone you can count on when it's snowing outside".  No description could apply more accurately to him. And for some of us there was no stormier moment at Phillips Academy than when the transition from Headmaster Kemper to hHeadmaster Sizer coincided with the great national unrest over the American role in Vietnam. For more than two years Don McLean was the principle guide of the Academy. Not that he took over the daily management in any sense. Rather he saw that trust was properly placed, that those entrusted were surely backed, that consideration of the critical issue of the day (coeducation) was not neglected, and that the search for Andover’s twelfth headmaster was skillfully conducted. Advice on the governance of the Academy, often in the form of demands, came from many sources. All were heard. But when the time for decision arrived, it was the Board of Trustees, and only the Trustees, who rightfully exercised that power. 

In recognition of his is great contributions to the school and to our trustee body, we speak also of his partner and our friend Martha. Never did we gather at Andover, that her presence was not felt. Further, we knew that her concern for the best interest of Phillips Academy did not start and stop with trustee meetings. Ted Sizer spoke truly when, at Don's memorial service, he said “ His marriage with Martha – two vivid personalities in serene and secure joining - was very special. However family customs may shift in our culture, the loyalty lived out by Don and Martha expresses humanity at its best.

Our academy is the stronger, the wiser, the more worthy for the life and service of Donald H. McLean, Jr.