An Historic Moment

By Walter C. Johnson, Hackley Review Winter 2012-13: On October 10th I wrote an email to our community announcing the gift to Hackley of three paintings from the Collection of Herbert Allen and Ethel Strong Allen, a bequest from Ethel Allen. Hackley sold these paintings -- Nymphéas (1905) by Claude Monet, Pommiers et faneuses, Eragny (1895) by Camille Pissarro, and L’allée des peupliers à Moret au bord du Loing (1890) by Alfred Sisley -- at auction by Christie’s on November 7th for final bids totaling $45,200,000.
This transformative gift is part of three generationsof philanthropic leadership from the Allen family, leadership which has in several critical moments of our history provided vital and visionary support to our school community. As I wrote in October, Herbert Allen -- father of Herbert A. Allen ’58 -- served as a trustee of Hackley School for 37 years, and as an honorary trustee for six more until his death in 1997. In the 1950s, when the school was struggling financially, he recognized the school’s potential and nurtured it. One of his grandsons noted that his grandfather wanted “to ensure that Hackley School would be one of the best of its kind and be able to continue its original mission.”

Whatever Hackley is now and can be in the future is a result of Herbert Allen’s faith and his actions, and the ongoing commitment of his children and grandchildren. The Allen Pool, the original Kathleen Allen Lower School, and the faculty homes in Allen’s Alley are just a few of the more visible benefits to Hackley as a result of Mr. Allen’s generosity. Herbert A. Allen ’58 has continued the family’s philanthropic mission on behalf of Hackley, most notably with a gift of $10 million that launched Hackley’s successful Centennial Campaign. The Centennial Campaign raised the $50 million that has fundamentally reshaped the campus landscape over the last fifteen years, enabling the purchaseof 172 adjoining acres from the Rockefeller family, allowing the strengthening of our faculty compensation and financial aid programs, and making possible new campus facilities to support our educational programs.

This new gift of more than $45 million creates an historic moment in the life of our school. It challenges us to imagine a future previously beyond our immediate grasp. As I wrote in an email on November 8th announcing the auction results, all of us in the Hackley community are deeply grateful to Ethel Allen and the Allen family for their generosity and leadership -- they inspire us all to do our best for Hackley. The Hackley community as a whole also deserves thanks. Our collective efforts over the last two decades have builta culture of philanthropy at Hackley that ranges from our students’ extensive community service efforts tothe engagement of parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends in supporting our school. When 94% of parents and 30% of alumni support Hackley’s Annual Fund year after year -- when in addition hundreds of families and individuals give even more to capital projects and endowment, when you give to assure the best educational environment for all our children, to support gifted teachers and coaches, and to support access to Hackley for talented students regardless of means -- you are inspiring gifts like this from the Allen family. A great school is shaped by such collective commitmentand effort.

In the coming months, Hackley will be deep in conversations with the Allen family to consider how this new benefaction might best serve our school’s long-term goals and strengthen Hackley for the future. All who love Hackley are joined in the excitement of imagining this gift’s shaping influence in the coming decades.

With that gratitude, inspiration, and excitement also comes great responsibility. Hackley is already distinguished among its peers, and this gift has brought Hackley new prominence on the national stage.There is no question that it will enable us to improve dramatically the educational experience we are able to offer all students currently enrolled, and those in future generations. Our responsibility is deeper even than that, however. Before receiving this extraordinary bequest, I wrote for this fall’s issue of Hackley’s newsletter Perspectives:

Hackley School bears an extraordinary responsibility, not only to our parents and students, but toour country, now and in the future. We share that responsibility with our nation’s other leading independent schools, which, like Hackley, offer an education supported not only by the significant tuition dollars paid by parents, but also by income from our endowment and tax-deductible capital and Annual Fund gifts. The educational opportunity Hackley and its peers offer is not available to most students in the United States, and as such, it represents a precious societal resource, an investment in our collective future more important than any other.


As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, Hackley is a public charity, and need-based financial aid is the primary way in which that identity is expressed. The mission for our financial aid program is published on our web site:

Hackley’s financial aid program assures that the inability of families to pay full tuition is not a barrier to creating a stimulating student peer environmentin terms of skills, talents, gender, ethnicity, national origin, religion, socioeconomics, sexual orientation and family structures. Such a peer environment, reflective of the world in which we live and work, is essential to effective education and stimulates achievement through high standards in the academic, artistic, athletic, and moral dimensions of education. In its broadest terms, financial aid enacts Hackley’s commitment to educational achievement and the democratic ethic.

This gift makes that mission even more morally compelling, as it will make Hackley’s education an even more precious societal resource. We must in service to Hackley’s democratic ethos do all we can to assure that Hackley is accessible to all able students in our society. That commitment will make us worthy of this great gift and great opportunity, and will honor Herbert Allen’s wish that Hackley not only “be one of the best of its kind,” but also “be able to continue its original mission.”
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