The Chronicle
A8 News
May 29, 2
Hudnut bid
Retiring president em • Continued from page A1
Last day of school for Hudnut after 60-plus years of learning By Elana Zeltser
Perched atop a telephone pole in rural Vannes, France, Thomas C. Hudnut strung wires, redirecting electricity to farms that had remained virtually untouched since the 15th century. As an employee of the National Electric Company the summer after his freshman year in college, Hudnut climbed down from the telephone pole, hopped in a deux chevaux truck with co-workers Guy and Claude and continued his immersion into the French language and culture he studied since high school. “It was sink or swim,” Hudnut said. “But it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.” Far removed from his summer as an electrician, Hudnut is retiring after 36 years as a headmaster. Yet when he applied to travel abroad in his first year at Princeton University, he had no intention of pursuing a career in education lasting nearly half a century. Hudnut’s original career plans had him studying foreign languages and cultures to become a member of the state department. After receiving his master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, he moved to Washington D.C. to begin climbing up the ladder of bureaucracy. “I had romantic notions of what the life of a diplomat was.” Hudnut said. “It was based on the Graham Greene novels where it would be ‘Our Man in Havana’ and ‘Our Man in Moscow.’” Instead, he accepted his first teaching job at St. Albans School in Washington as a European history teacher and stayed there seven years before becoming headmaster at the Norwood School for five years. Following that, he moved to Marin County in Northern California to take on the same position at Branson School for five years before transferring to Harvard School, “and the rest,” he said, “is history.” As he shifted his focus towards education, he also maintained a side career as an opera singer, performing with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, D.C. for almost 10 years. “We were Leonard Bernstein’s favorite chorus so we sang several times for him in Carnegie Hall in New York,” Hudnut said. Hudnut was raised in a religious household, his father
a Presbyterian minister. In sent to war. Washington he was a church “I like war history,” Hudsoloist as well as a member nut said. “I’d be interested to of the professional quartet of know how many men my age the Washington Hebrew Con- have a tinge of regret as I have gregation of Shabbat Friday about not having gone to VietNights. He regularly attends nam. We all let other people do the Tuesday morning service it. The tinge comes from my led by Father J. Young in St. fascination with wars and war Saviour’s Chapel. heroes and people who have Hudnut said his voice is done heroic things. It leaves now out of practice, although you wondering what you would he performed with the Cham- be like in similar situations.” ber Singers this weekend as Hudnut’s interest in wars part of the Cabaret show. led him and a friend to pursue “Singing is like being an independent research, writing athlete,” Hudnut said. “If a book on the role of a French you’re not in shape, you can’t army in politics during the Aldo it as well as you want to.” gerian revolution from 1954 to Still, his love for Opera also 1962. served to expand his reper“The movie I’ve seen the toire of languages as it sparked greatest number of times is his interest in learning Ital- ‘Patton,’” the war buff said. “It’s ian. Hudthe story of Gennut is now eral George S. setting out Patton in World on teachWar II. Patton There has been an ing himself was an incandesawful lot of diplomacy cent character, Spanish because “an very objectionrequired in schools.” educated able in a lot of —Thomas C. Hudnut ways, but admiAmerican in President rable in others.” the 21st century ought Aside from to be able to watching films, speak Spanish,” Hudnut said. Hudnut enjoys fishing in his “It’s as simple as that.” free time, even though the Lauded as a linguist, opera lake closest to his heart is not singer, teacher, scholar and conducive to fishing. Hudadministrator, Hudnut consid- nut spends his summers at ers his greatest personal ac- his family compound called complishments to be his three Windover in the mountains children, two granddaughters of upstate New York, the cenand 43-year marriage. terpiece of which is a lake and A 22-year-old Hudnut met an old farmhouse purchased his future wife at a Janis Jo- by his paternal grandfather plin concert in 1969, proposed in 1928. In the years since, two months later and walked the Hudnuts have expanded down the aisle five months af- the original property from 160 ter that. They were preparing acres and single farmhouse to for a move to Boston, Hudnut over 600 acres and nine houses. to pursue graduate school, “None of the houses are Deedie to start a new job. visible from any of the other “It’s a different world now- houses,” Hudnut said. “We adays,” Hudnut said. “We were don’t allow motorboats on the through having children at a lake. It is very peaceful.” younger age than our youngStill, a large part of his est is now and he’s just getting life is defined by time spent married this summer. We’ve on campuses. He has gone to gotten to see them grow up school as a student, teacher and see them get married and or headmaster non-stop since have children. It’s nice.” his first day of nursery school Just as Hudnut was begin- when he was 3. ning to settle down and start Even upon retirement, a family, the Vietnam War after he relaxes for the sumthreatened to pull him away. mer at Windover and sees his Hudnut had received a stu- youngest son get married, he dent deferment his sophomore will still be going to school. year of college and scored He plans to maintain his conwell on a multiple-choice test, nections with international which exempted him from the schools he has made over the draft. The soon-to-be-married years. So, his training in diploHudnut had already begun the macy, despite the divergence paperwork to join a National of his career path, has proved Guard unit in New York when useful after all, as “there has the lottery drew his birthday been an awful lot of diplomacy 326th out of 366, which made required in schools,” Hudnut it highly unlikely he would be said.
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‘STANFORD’ Shortly after the start of co-education, Hudnut sat in his former office as headmaster on the second floor of Chalmers and made a “conscious decision” with Chair of the Board of Trustees Cynthia Baise to model Harvard-Westlake on Stanford. “It would be difficult to find a place, a university, that values high performance in athletics
ATHLETICS The year 1997 was a turning point for Wolverine athletics. Framed on the wall next to Hudnut’s desk, a red USA Today sports page nationally ranks the Wolverines’ basketnathanson ball team with future John Luebtow NBA stars Jason ’97 and Jarron Collins ’97. Around the same time, soccer and volleyball teams brought home championships for the first time, moving the school into a new era of athletic prominence. “This was a place in the sports pages everyday,” he said. Never much of an athlete himself, Hudnut saw how fans got caught up in the excitement of winning teams and the free publicity the teams brought. In particular, he calls the growth of girls’ sports “one of nathanson the most gratifying John Feulner things in the past 25 years,” but the goal with sports, Hudnut said, has been nothing short of “to be seriously good in everything.” ARTS The merger of the two faculties provided an immediate boost to the visual arts, allowing for a larger program that reached across more disciplines. “Whatever happened—that
Hudnut around cam 1987 - Hudnut arrives at Harvard School
COURTESY OF KEVIN O’MALLEY
HE’S ‘NUTS’: President Thomas C. Hudnut’s high school senior profile displays his extracurricular acitivities, a quote of his choosing, his nickname and a picture from the Choate School in Connecticut.
Trustees had approached Harvard’s board and proposed merging the two single-sex institutions that had long acted informally as sister schools. Though Hudnut, a veteran of single-sex boarding schools, “literally couldn’t imagine” attending a coed school, he had become a believer in co-education for providing a “a healthier learning environment” and for promoting gender equality. A group of Westlake parents were not as easily convinced, fighting the merger with a lawsuit that ultimately failed but did not quench all doubts. To reassure those who were still “irrationally afraid that girls would take a backseat in the merger,” Hudnut set forth on a deliberate program of modeling gender equality with one boy and one girl leading the student body as well as one boy and one girl serving as editorin-chiefs of the new newspaper, the Chronicle. Tremendous efforts were made to make the old Harvard campus less of a “men’s club” from changing the cafeteria food to adding women’s restrooms. Though Hudnut said most issues “never rose to my level” in a generally smooth transition, he does acknowledge difficulties, especially for the girls in the class of 1992 who were shipped to the Harvard campus for their senior year. “I have to say that a number of the girls in that class of ’92 of made the merger work,” Hudnut said. “I’m very, very, very grateful to them 21 years later for all of they did.”
and the arts as highly as [Stanford] does the academic quality of its intellectual life,” he said. The merged school was small enough to provide enough individual attention to each student but large enough to have students to succeed across a broad range of activities, Hudnut said. Although he can list the names of schools in California with strong programs in either athletics or academics or arts, Hudnut proudly knows of “no school that is stronger in all three aspects that I consider school to be about.”
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ANDREW GLAZIER/CHRONICLE ARCHIVES
HYPHENATION: Hudnut discusses his plans to merge Harvard School with Westlake School for girls. “While there [were] problems and difficulties attendant to the merger the overriding aim of creating a ‘super school’ was certainly worth it,” Hudnut said.
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