basketball, baseball—the football coach’s son, participated in the musical: sang and even danced his way across the stage in the spring of his senior year. I know I look with pride today at the boys here at Belmont Hill in the B-Flats who are fine singers but so much more. We have almost always had at least one or two members of the varsity hockey team, and many other athletes and multitalented boys, singing in the B-Flats. That suggests something of what I think you can be and what a boys’ school can be. I remember one of my favorite students from the dorm we ran back at Deerfield. A pretty good track and cross-country runner, and a solid student, he loved to cook. By the time he had finished Williams College—for he was a pretty good student as well—he had spent a semester studying at the Cordon Bleu, a famous cooking school in London. Today, he and his wife and children live in the Berkshires, where he is the head chef for arguably the most famous restaurant in that region. So my first point for you is that you can be a boy and be anything. But let me try this on a different level. What are the characteristics of being male that dominate our society? What are you supposed to be like? Are you supposed to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? What are you supposed to do when you listen to Eminem and he launches another attack on women? What values should you hold? My vision is that you can be both tough and tender. Tough and tender: What does that mean? I think that many of the traits which we think of as particularly male are admirable. To be strong, courageous, loyal: Those are good values. Many people think that men are supposed to be stoic: to bear pain, to handle adversity with quiet dignity. That, too, sounds like a healthy virtue, although I do not think that stoicism means that you deny having feelings or sometimes showing them. Boys are also known to have great energy, to enjoy play and games and sport. Boys and men are often protective of others, willing to take risks on behalf of others. If we go back to medieval times, there are great positive lessons in the legends of knights and acts of chivalry (an archaic idea today). These can all be good and noble virtues. They are certainly not exclusively male—many women exhibit these good characteristics as well—but they often are identified as particularly male.
61