Allen-Stevenson's Fathers' Dinner Speech

Walter Johnson was invited to speak on January 27, 2004, at the annual Allen-Stevenson's Fathers' Dinner. Allen-Stevenson is a K-9 school, so part of the purpose of the speech was to tell guests about Hackley as they consider their secondary school options following graduation from Allen-Stevenson.

Some of you may know that I followed David Trower as head of Collegiate’s Upper School, when he came to Allen-Stevenson in 1990. He was infinitely kind to me, guiding me as I learned my new job. I could not have had a wiser counselor, a teacher more understanding of the ways of boys. There is no higher tribute a parent can pay than to trust a child to one’s care; I cannot imagine a colleague to whom I would more confidently entrust my son than to David Trower.

When David asked me if I would speak here at Allen-Stevenson's Fathers' Dinner, I was flattered, gratified, and daunted. I was flattered that David, whom I so much esteem, would consider me; I was gratified, since I knew my charge was to tell you all something about Hackley, a school I love; and I was daunted at the prospect of talking however briefly to and about fathers and sons.

My father had his 91st birthday this January. He had a long career as a public school superintendent and a professor of educational administration at Teachers College, Columbia University. I am his son, and have followed a path near to his, and have become like him in ways it once would have terrified me to imagine.

The relationship of fathers and sons is one of great power; it cuts close to the bone; it shapes us.

First, all men are sons, and our fathers shape us towards our own roles as fathers, by absence, by love, by authority, by mystery. The very pride we may feel in our fathers can overawe, and the shame we may feel can lacerate. Our fathers are our best friends, our models, our rivals, our enemies, both eternal unchanging principles and fallible, inconsistent human beings. They are too much for us, and so we tame our fathers into stories, a practiced anecdote that through repetition takes us further from home.

Homer’s Odyssey tells this story. Odysseus, of course, is the father, searching always for home, for Ithaka, and Telemachus is his son, searching always for Odysseus. Both are seeking themselves, their own identity, one in home, and one in his father. In that strange, irrational logic of literature, they are one, different faces of the same seeker. The first voyager is Telemachus, whose quest for himself begins with the search for his father; the second is Odysseus, who knows he must return home, to his starting point, to be himself.

Fathers may seem familiar and near, but they always must be found anew, as we create ourselves anew.

Listen to this lovely passage from Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey. When Telemachus and Odysseus reunite, the son mistakes his father for a god; Odysseus speaks:

There is much that could be said about that passage, but the simplest is to note how hard it is to know one’s own father -- not as a god, not as a principle, not as a story, but as a human being and our father. We need to seek our fathers, and we need to have our own Ithakas, our points of departure and return.

I believe good schools can be our Ithakas. Let me tell you about mine.

Hackley School was founded in 1899 by Harvard educators and Unitarian ministers who wanted an alternative to the Episcopalian boys’ schools they saw as proselytizing. They wanted a school that would transcend denomination and be inclusive, welcoming and celebrating the differences among us – of religion, of race, of national origin. Within its first decade, Hackley had students who were Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, and even Unitarian. Origins are shaping, and today Hackley is more true to our founders’ ideals than ever before, in every form of diversity – from geographic and economic to racial and religious. When I came to Hackley, my stereotypes of a suburban school were broken; I found Hackley more diverse than urban day schools where I had taught before.

I was also surprised by Hackley’s campus – 285 unspoiled acres within 30 minutes drive of New York City, uniting the beauty of a boarding school in northern New England with the cultural advantages of the world’s greatest city. Hackley’s old buildings of Tudor stone and half-timber evoke an English boarding school, embracing a community that feels more like a village than the ordinary day school, with breakfast and dinner, residential faculty and a coeducational five-day boarding program for Upper School students.

Hackley’s campus includes by four fields, a gym, a pool, and three miles of cross-country trails; we offer boys football, cross-country, soccer, wrestling, basketball, swimming, fencing, winter track, lacrosse, baseball, tennis, squash, golf, and track. In the last few years Hackley has won New York State Championships in Soccer, Baseball, and Lacrosse, and our coed Swimming team has won a score of Ivy League Championships. Hackley has a winning tradition. Our academics are similarly strong. With 180 students in grades 11 and 12, last year our students took 320 AP exams with an average score of 4.2. Hackley students won 17 Gold Medals in the National Latin Exam in 2003, and the Classics Department was honored in 2003 by the Classical Association of the Empire State for the “Outstanding Latin Program in New York State.” We have a Music Institute that offers private lessons on campus with professional musicians, to supplement our regular music curriculum, and over 100 Hackley students received honors in the New York State School Music Association auditions in 2003, many participating as well in All-County and All-State bands, orchestras, and choruses.

Most important, our students have a culture of mutual support. They respect each other for commitment, for effort, for passion – even when their own interests may differ. Through relationships with each other and commitments to community service, they enact the sentence carved in Hackley’s lintel:

ENTER HERE TO BE AND FIND A FRIEND At Hackley, we believe that individuals create themselves, seek and find themselves, in the relationships with others that condition all achievement. That is why I believe Hackley can be an Ithaka, a place of setting out and coming home for our students.

I know many of you now or in a year or two will be setting out from Allen-Stevenson on your next journeys, seeking another Ithaka.

Let me offer you a poem for your journey – “Ithaka,” by C.P. Cavafy.

(C.P. Cavafy, 1863-1933. Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard)

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