Giving Back RICHARD GILDER ’50 AND LOIS C. CHILES
Photog raph by Harr y Stuar t Cahill
“ Seeing the campus, and particularly the buildings dedicated to the arts, made me want to go to school all over again.”
Richard Gilder ’50 has set the bar high for any husband searching for a grand, theatrical statement of love for his wife. Gilder, who recently made a $1 million gift to support Northfield Mount Hermon’s arts program and theater, asked that the 225-seat Rhodes Arts Center theater be named in honor of his wife, Lois C. Chiles. “The most meaningful time of my life was during the years at NMH,” says Gilder, explaining his long-standing support of the school through the Gilder Foundation. “It was a wonderful period for me because I could meet all kinds of people, and I became very close with a number of them.” Gilder, founder and partner at the New York City investment firm Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Company, still gets together every September with old NMH friends at his vacation home in Maine. Chiles and Gilder, who married six years ago, made their first joint visit to campus in May 2010. “My husband wanted me to see his beloved NMH, so we flew up and took a tour of the campus,” Chiles recalls. “Seeing the campus, and particularly the buildings dedicated to the arts, made me want to go to school all over again.” Now, with the newly named Lois C. Chiles Theater, she’ll always be a presence at NMH. An actress who appeared in The Great Gatsby, Moonraker, and Broadcast News, Chiles serves on the board of advisors for the Yale School of Drama. Of her eponymous theater, she says, “I like that it is modeled on the Globe Theatre. This is what any school would like to have. It is the perfect size and has a classic orientation.” How did Chiles react upon learning the theater would bear her name? “She was very excited,” Gilder says understatedly. Chiles is more descriptive: “I was overwhelmed. I didn’t believe it for the longest time. It is only now becoming real to me.”