T H E R E IS A LW AY S ONE MORE C H O R D TO S T R IK E , A W O R D O R P H R A S E TO CHANGE, ONE L A S T TO U C H W IT H T H E B R U S H O R C H IS E L .
father: “Seventy-three years of faith; sixty years in love and life with
almost always portraits of people whom he admired. Thanks to the
Phyllis; eight children and the wonderful spouses that followed . . . .”
purity of that admiration and Norm’s powers of empathy, they were all,
and more. “But the largest, most impressive number has been the one that the
at least indirectly, also portraits of the poet. When Pete Woodward once underwent heart surgery, Norm wrote a poem called “The Headmaster’s
last two years of fighting cancer has placed on the board: days lived
Heart.” In it he imagines a recovering headmaster looking forward to
and lives touched,” she continued. “Spend any day at my parents’ house
Commencement in the spring. In two of its stanzas he finds just the
and you would be overwhelmed by the phone calls, cards, and visits
right words, we think, for summing up the joy and the heartbreak of a
from students and co-workers. Day after day, month after month, this
teacher’s life:
year following the last, we have all been humbled by the sheer volume of love. No man has ever been richer in words, and no man has ever been richer in numbers.” “In Norm Walker’s 23 years of teaching and coaching at
The maple leaves that blazed and died in fall Will rise; winter storms will baptize Earth; And spring, a time against the tide of love,
Holderness, he taught us much,” said his friend and Head of School
Lets children, shadows all, race from our lives
Phil Peck, after learning of Norm’s death. “He taught us how to live by
’Cross sunlit fields in floods of green.
embracing every aspect of life to its fullest, and he taught us how to die
They will commence, in one last rite,
with dignity, courage, and peace. We will miss Norm terribly, but Norm
To slide quite through his hands and flow away
and the lessons he taught us—as a teacher, coach, dorm master, and
Like mountain streams. The left ventricle thumps.
poet—will always be part of Holderness.” Norm’s friend Pete Woodward—headmaster from 1977 to 2001,
The Head, this man and his plumbed heart, these, too,
and the man who hired this young educator from Massachusetts—also
Will now begin to count the weeks, the days.
reveres Norm for the lessons he taught. “In my 34 years as an educator,
Soon he will render words and, true to form,
Norm Walker was the most influential teacher and coach I was ever for-
Confer upon the young a blessing old,
tunate enough to know,” he says. “His compassion and his commitment
And end his prayer and end this day and end
to his students were immeasurable.”
His time and end . . . love will never end.
It’s probably not quite accurate to say that Norm’s poems were
Holderness School Today
13