Mary Fern

IN SPITE OF THE CHILLY WEATHER, she was encouraged by the warmth of the people she met; and by the time the 1967–1968 school year started, she was on the faculty, teaching English, creative writing, and drama.

To say she had a multitude of talents would be an understatement, which was a good thing, because there was no Performing Arts Department at Cushing when she arrived, so she had to start from scratch. She was committed to sharing her love of drama with Cushing’s students. “I wanted to give as many kids as possible the chance to have the drama experience,” she said in 1998. She increased the number of productions and carved out time between athletics and classes so students could pursue the arts. At first, that meant her students had rehearsals from 6:00 to

7:30 in the morning, but the kids stuck with it, and Mary applauded their diligence.

The Cushing community loved the performances, and they became quite important to life at the Academy. Her students performed classics like Death of a Salesman and The Importance of Being Earnest, but they also performed original one act plays—a tradition she began in those early years and which would last until after she’d retired from teaching at Cushing.

For Mary, though, the arts truly took center stage after the arrival of Headmaster Curry. “When Dr. Curry came in, he did so much to make it possible for drama and dance. He made it easy for kids to be in productions, and I’ve never forgotten that,” she said in 1998.

When I was a “faculty brat,” Mary was directing the musical South Pacific. She was kind enough to include some of the faculty children as extras in the show. Our role during this scene was to be dancing on an elevated catwalk which was built off the side of the stage in Cowell Chapel. I fell off the staging—two stories up, it seemed to me— and landed on the ground. When I rose to my feet to let everyone know I was still alive, the crowd went nuts. After the show, in Mary’s subtle way, she said to me, “Well, you stole the show. They seemed like a dead crowd before that; anyway, nice job.” I’m sure she was trying to relieve my embarrassment. I was happy she wasn’t mad.

BRUCE LEMIEUX ’85

At Bunnell High School in Stratford, where Mary first taught, a group of her voc-ed students were sufficiently inspired by her teaching to mount an impromptu march to the principal’s office carrying “Hamlet” on their shoulders. I think Mary, then a young teacher, was somewhat surprised that they had been so moved by their classroom experience. As Mary gained further experience of the years at Cushing as a play director and English teacher, and later as a college admissions advisor, she retained that creative spirit and gift of inspiring others.

SALLY GRAHAM JACQUET (MARY’S SISTER)

It was back in 1985 when a cocky 30-year-old basketball coach and a demanding 65-year-old theatre director became fast friends. I’m not sure what the attraction was, but I suspect that it had something to do with the fact that we both liked martinis. I remember when I was doing the lighting for the faculty play Deadwood Dick. The Celtics were in the playoffs, so I snuck a small TV into the lighting booth during a rehearsal. I had one line in the play that I was supposed to shout out from the booth. Well, I got a little too into the game and missed my cue. Mary was so [annoyed] that she took the line away from me and gave it to Dave Korman, who, by the way, was watching the game with me.

BILL WENNING, FACULTY MEMBER

Mary was a fixture at the Academy, and her work mattered to decades of Cushing students. “I had a real house, and I was able to have students over for coffee or sand wiches,” she remembered. “We had a number of those sessions. They were teaching sessions, but it was an awful lot of fun.” She also made a point of producing large productions so “lots of kids could try their stuff.”

It wasn’t just the students who benefited from her enthusiasm, however. Fellow faculty members performed too. “I had wonderful people to work with,” she said. “Some of them were very, very talented. We had a good number of plays and even more opportunities for teachers to get to know students. They got to know students not just in a regular classroom. And students got to know their teachers too.”

She remembered fondly a young Tony Fisher ’69, who, among other things, did lighting for her productions. “It seemed to me he had a particularly loud voice when he called for a certain light that’s a yellowish shade and it’s called Bastard Amber,” she said. “Tony would yell to ‘put on the Bastard Amber!’” There was a gentleman in the chapel who was very upset to hear such language and wanted to know why Tony was yelling “Bastard Amber.” Mary tried to explain, but the gentleman just didn’t think it was very nice. “So I went in and I asked Tony—who I know just loved doing it—to tone down the noise.” Tony responded he couldn’t because everyone needed to be able to hear him. That seemed like a good enough reason to Mary, so she let him continue.

Sometimes she spent time in the chapel by herself when it was quiet, because she felt that was when she got her best staging ideas. But she also acknowledged that sometimes there was sadness in the quiet. “I would come down when the students I knew and loved were going to go out and graduate and… a couple of times I came down here to weep because I was going to miss them very much.” That was just the kind of teacher she was. She and her husband never had children, but when people would ask her if she had any, she would say, “Oh yes. About 5,000 or so.”

Eventually, Mary was named the Chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, a role she kept until the arrival of Whit Wales in 1988. She retired in 1992, having spent her last four years working in the Alumni and Development Office. By the end of her tenure at the Academy, she had also been the Head of the English Department, taught public speaking, and worked in College Counseling. For her contributions to the Academy, she was named an honorary alumna in 1992.

She was proud of the work she did at the Academy, the students who passed through its doors, and the faculty who taught there. In a 2007 interview, she said, “The faculty is student-centered, very much so, still. And I hope that never changes because that’s a big part of what Cushing is. It is a student-centered place. It is also devoted to the idea that you have a freshman or first-year student and you do your very best as a faculty member to bring out the best in them.”

For many of her students, she was a defining point in their Cushing experience. Throughout the years, on birthdays and also at her retirement, people have submitted their stories and memories of the amazing Mary Fern, and there are constant threads throughout. She was a perfectionist— never willing to settle for anything less than the best. But still, she was compassionate and devoted to her students. She gave the gift of confidence to the students she taught. And in return, Cushing got something, too. Dr. Richard Kleefield, Trustee emeritus and parent to James Kleefield ’83, said, “Mary’s gift to Cushing: the best years of her life. There can be no finer legacy for any human being.” He noted, too, that she was “the epitome of a dedicated teacher filled with warmth and a special love and caring for each and every one whose life she has touched.” The Academy will be forever grateful for her contributions.

These days, Mrs. Fern resides in Leominster, where she is regularly visited by Cushing faculty and generations of grateful former students.

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