update: former faculty and staff
prophecies of failure,” Don wrote in an article in the fall, 1987, HST. “But soon a pattern of eminent success began to emerge…To hear a 16-year-old boy say, ‘I believe that Charles Beard exaggerated his claims that the writers of the Constitution sought political control and special privileges for the upper classes,’ was a thrill enough to satisfy a teacher for a lifetime.” Of course Don had done so much gnashing of teeth during his own academic struggles that he knew exactly how to help the stragglers and ensure “eminent success.” He concluded that HST article with words that bear special resonance now in this era of fake news and social media echo chambers. “A healthy skepticism of all written (and oral) opinions develops a willingness to read further, to question, to probe,” Don wrote. “us, the US history course at Holderness became an intellectual training ground for not only further study in the real world of history, but also for a sound healthy approach to all of life’s problems.” Don himself was skeptical of the Holderness Board of Trustees’ choice of headmaster to replace the retiring Mr. Hagerman in 1977. e Rev. B.W. “Pete” Woodward was an Episcopal minister from Kansas, and Don was frankly concerned for the direction of the school—even after the new head unveiled a “Ski Kansas” t-shirt beneath his tie and buttondown. But Don and Pete quickly became allies in both the groundbreaking work of making Holderness co-educational and the stay-thecourse work of remaining a traditional liberal arts boarding school. And during the campus expansion and renovations of the next twenty years, Pete was particularly grateful for the ways his burden was eased as a development officer. “In the roster of Holderness greats such as Loys Wiles, Coach Hinman, Edric Weld, Don Hagerman, and Norm Walker, Don Henderson is at the top of the list,” said Pete. “For my part, I never really had to raise funds as headmaster. I simply went out and collected financial gifts made to the school because of the gratitude created in the hearts of all by Don and Pat Henderson.”
Don and Pat Henderson, circa 1985
at 1987 article Don wrote for HST was a valedictory piece, since that was his last year at Holderness. Naturally it was Pat’s as well—she who had been an admissions officer, the school’s first archivist, an occasional faculty member, and counselor and Mother Superior, as it were, to the school’s first female students. (Don had been no less welcoming, though he famously had trouble adapting the words with which he began each class—”Good morning, boys”—to the new circumstances.) In June of that same year, Don delivered a commencement speech that still rings down the years as one of Holderness’s formative texts, one that deeply informs its mission statement and values today. “Happiness is not a destina-
tion,” Don said from the podium. “Happiness is an attitude, a way of looking at life, an understanding of our relationship to the universe and fellow humans.” At the end he cited Robert Frost’s poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”: “Yield who will to their separation,/ My object in living is to unite/ My avocation and my vocation/As my two eyes make one in sight./Only where love and need are one,/And the work is play for mortal stakes,/Is the deed ever really done/For Heaven and the future’s sakes.” Of course, Don Henderson had never yielded to such a separation. In coming to a New Hampshire boarding school with a ski team, he had not merely found a way to unite skiing,
fall 2018 | HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY