By Rick Van Arnam
Northfield, Vermont
Here is a question to which I’m sure we will both reply with the same answer: can you imagine working for one organization for sixty-six years? My answer – no! In my three decades of working, one common theme is that a person does not stay with the same company for his or her entire career. In fact, there is only one organization in which I know friends who have been employed for thirty years – the Army. I was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1984 and spent the following six years on active duty. During my time on active duty, I served with a few officers with whom I still stay in touch and who are approaching or have passed thirty years of service. But that is my limit of knowing others who can say that they have worked only for one company. And even a thirty-year careerist in the Army is still not half way to the sixty-six years of continuous service that Mr. Frank Boyden spent as headmaster of Deerfield Academy.
Recently, I read John McPhee’s short biography of Mr. Boyden who joined Deerfield Academy straight out of Amherst College in 1902. He was twenty-two years old. Joining the Academy just before the Wright brothers’ first flight and retiring just before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, his career spanned three major wars, the Great Depression and the birth of the baby boom generation. His length of tenure still amazes people as I discovered yesterday when I shared his story at local high school graduation party. It is hard to find a single measure that summarizes Mr. Boyden’s importance to Deerfield Academy, but his impact on secondary education in America goes beyond the Academy’s history as evidenced by the stories of recognition in McPhee’s work.
To frame Mr. Boyden’s historic tenure, it is helpful to visit the leadership work of two New York Times best selling authors. Dr. John C. Maxwell and Jim Collins both use five-level leadership models to illustrate effective leadership over time; level-five leadership, for the authors, is the highest level attainable. Although the authors take a different approach in creating their separate models (Maxwell’s seems more qualitative and Collins’ is grounded in quantitative research), both reach similar conclusions. Level-five leadership is usually characterized by what others will do or say for a person – usually later in a person’s life or career. In Maxwell’s case, Level-five leadership is like a gift given by others to the leader – recognition for a job well done usually evidenced by followers who look to the leader for advice, who lavish praise and recognition on the leader and a general recognition by peers as someone whose being is ‘special.’ One example in the news over the past year is the legendary coach, John Wooden, who died at the age of ninety-nine. In Collins’ case, Level-five Leadership is characterized largely by a sense of humility – someone who is equally at ease and sincere in recognizing others for success while taking responsibility when plans go awry. So when I read about Mr. Boyden, I was struck by the compelling evidence that solidifies his place as one of America’s greatest all-time educators and stands as an example of the highest level of leadership.
The first piece of evidence focuses on the Academy’s transition from a public-private school to becoming fully private and occurred in the 1920’s. Although Mr. Boyden was still young, he was in his forties, he had already been headmaster for over twenty years. Deerfield, at the time, faced a dilemma resulting from a new law that did not allow public funds to be used for private schools (Ironically, I worked through a similar bequest situation as the former owner of The Gray Building, www.graybuilding.org, in Northfield, Vermont which had title issues dating back to the mid-1800’s associated with the terms of a bequest granting land to be used for educational purposes). To become fully private, in addition to a lengthy legal battle, the Academy had to come up with one hundred fifty thousand dollars to pay the town the value of a bequest dated from 1878. Recognizing just how important Deerfield Academy had become in educating young boys, three of Boyden’s peers at competing schools raised $1.5 million dollars over six years – from their alumni – to keep the Academy open helping Deerfield transition completely to a private school. As author John McPhee wrote, this was an “extraordinary gesture in American education” and one that is a direct reflection on Boyden’s potentialities as an educator and leader. It is also significant to note that this occurred approximately one-third into Boyden’s career – not toward the end – he would remain as head of school for another forty years!
Further evidence is contained within statistics that recognize his ability to produce educational leaders and that recognize Mr. Boyden for his lifetime of work in education. By 1965, author John McPhee counted twenty-nine heads at other schools that had either learned from or served under Boyden at Deerfield. Additionally, Dr. Boyden received honorary degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and seventeen other schools. The first statistic points to his ability to develop others – a leadership competency needed for growth – and the second statistic points to the respect and admiration gifted to him not from secondary school peers, but from the post-secondary school ranks where his students earned their college degrees.
But the greatest attribution to Mr. Boyden may be in a simple quote from a college classmate who likely acquired more wealth during a shorter business career than Mr. Boyden earned in his lengthy service in education. Good people of character who become great leaders don’t do it in short-order (see Perseverance – The Reading Glasses Principle). Daily is the process that led to Mr. Boyden’s achievements and his enduring reputation as “The Headmaster” is captured best by Robert Cleeland, also a member of Amherst College’s class of 1902, who said this about Mr. Boyden, “He was unknown in the class, and he is the biggest man the class produced.” While I don’t predict a return in time to an era when a person works for only one company, I do believe we can be inspired by Mr. Boyden’s life. Committed to a cause and connected to kids, he is a man who “finished up strong” securing a spot near the top of the class of great American educators.
RVA
Credits
The Headmaster, by John McPhee, Copyright 1966, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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