Bulletin | Fall 2013 7
2013 Year End Celebration Honors Retiring Teacher Zack Goodyear
Headmaster Alex D. Curtis and the Choate community gathered on June 6 to celebrate the retirement of six people and honor them for their years of service to the School. Former Dean of Faculty Ed Maddox read a citation in honor of veteran faculty member Zack Goodyear, hired in 1969 by then-Headmaster Seymour St. John. Goodyear’s tenure at Choate spanned four administrations. Zack’s wife, Julie RH ’65, was Admission Coordinator for the Icahn Scholars Programs.
Excerpted remarks by Ed Maddox:
In September, 1969, America was fighting in Vietnam, student protests rocked college campuses, the Woodstock festival had just ended, and Americans still celebrated the moon landing two months before. On September 8, Zack and Julie Goodyear danced to the music of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra at their wedding reception at New York’s St. Regis Hotel. Five days later, they moved into their “bridal suite” on Hill 3 which, though it lacked a full kitchen, came fully equipped with 28 fourth, fifth, and sixth form boys. It was a different Choate. Though conversations between the two schools had begun, Rosemary Hall had not yet moved back to Wallingford for “coordinate education.” As a faculty spouse, Julie was expected to pour after-dinner demitasse in the Faculty Room for the faculty (all but one of whom were male) and the sixth form (all of whom were male). Zack and Julie spent 27 years living in dormitories: Hill House, Woodhouse, Bungalow, East Cottage, Logan Munroe. Their door was always open to students, who were treated like part of an extended family. One student wrote when he graduated that the Goodyears, “provided the combination of guidance and love which bonded us to one another as well as to you.” As Director of Summer Programs, Zack doubled the size and funding for the Connecticut Scholars Program. As adviser to the Icahn Scholars Program, he guided scores of sixth formers through the college application process. As form dean, he balanced the virtues of respect and adherence to the rules with compassion and understanding.
But Zack’s passion was the classroom, especially his two classes of American Political Institutions and Effecting Political Change. He has been an outspoken guardian of academic rigor and curricular excellence, a cautionary voice against the undercurrents of creeping grade inflation. Over the 16 years that he was adviser to The News, Zack sought to instill in the News masthead and its reporters the highest standards of journalism while maintaining a student newspaper like that of our most distinguished peer schools. It should come as no surprise that one of Zack’s projects in retirement is to work for the Municipal Arts Society of New York. This is the organization that, under the leadership of Jackie Kennedy, successfully preserved Grand Central Station from the developers wrecking ball in 1978. Zack has often spoken out against building or re-decoration projects that go against the grain of the historical architecture and design of the School. He’s lost some battles with Headmasters and he’s won a few, none more momentous, perhaps, when in the early ’90s a new Headmaster developed plans to plow under and plant over the softball diamond on Mem Field. Today, the softball field stands because Zack had the temerity to express his outrage at the administration’s threat to tamper with an important piece of school history. For those of you who follow in their footsteps, I urge you to view Julie and Zack as the ideal to which members of this faculty should aspire. For 44 years of service to this school and to the thousands of young people whose lives have been touched and enriched by theirs, we thank them.
top Julie and Zack Goodyear Bottom Zack Goodyear and Dan Courcey ’86 from the mid-1980s. Other Year End Honorees included mathematics teacher Robert J. DeMarco, Administrative Assistant to the Headmaster and Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trustees Rosa C. Holava, Admission Campus Visit Coordinator Elizabeth M. Mitchell, librarian Marie L. Morch, and history teacher and Head of Campus Ministry Rev. Marc J. Trister. The program also recognized faculty and staff reaching their 25-year milestones: Susan M. Atwater, John S. Cobb, Elisa V. Currie, Nijole M. Janik, Masako O. Miller, Frank Peters, Linda C. Read, John G. Russell, and James J. Yanelli, Jr.