AWARD ACCEPTANCE REMARKS FROM MR. ORDWAY ’67
I am deeply honored to receive this
award from a school and a community that has meant so much to me over
the years, one in which, like the co-
would like to think that it was perhaps in part because as a
I have been fortunate enough to
teacher I might have opened a few minds and steered a few
recipient of this award, Sandy Pelz ’71, play so many parts: student, teacher, administrator, parent.
How does one assess the impact of
people down productive paths of thought.
a school on one’s life? It’s a subject to
never been to school, and Charlie
and quirky iconoclasm. And that
For some, school can be a mere blip on
was named, took a chance on me,
Holmes once said was the only way to
which I have given some thought lately. the screen, a kind of necessary stage of life, as Shakespeare said, “the whining
schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping unwillingly to” an academic workhouse. To others, it
can be a double-door opener, a horizon expander, a preview of the pageant of
human learning and feast for the mind. As the historian Jaques Barzun said,
you really don’t know which it is until
at least 20 years later, and then it sets in. To me, it was a true horizon expander. But it was also much more than that.
When I first set foot in Browning,
I was a seven-year-old kid who didn’t speak English all that well and had
Eric Ordway ’67 (left) and Sandy Pelz ’71.
84
Although I do not know why I was given this award, I
T HE
BUZZER
Cook ’38, after whom this award
accepting me as a scholarship student. Then, 15 years later, I was a green
iconoclasm – which Oliver Wendell get at truth – was key.
For although Browning may seem
and inexperienced college graduate,
to be like many other private schools
some professional piano, done some
because at Browning, not only many
whose CV consisted of having played construction work, and sold hot
dogs and hoagies, and Charlie Cook ’38 decided to take a chance on me
again, this time not as a student but
as a teacher. And, I can tell you that, in the words of Robert Frost, those two decisions “have made all the
difference.” Thanks to the first, I was able to enjoy the unique culture of
Browning, which was, and I think still is, a curious blend of traditionalism
Eric Ordway ’67.
out there, it really isn’t. And that’s
of the students, who were of different nationalities, different backgrounds
and different points of view, but also many of the teachers marched to the
beat of a different drummer, whether that meant moonlighting as actors, racing motorcycles or espousing
Marxist doctrines. And so did the School itself march to a different
drummer. Its public speaking contests, some of which I was lucky enough to