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William “Hart” Perry ’51 died on February 3, 2011, after a brief illness. He is survived by his wife, Gillian; his five children, William, Theodore, Alissa Gumprecht, Alexandra Mills and Colin; and 12 grandchildren. Perry was born in Newton in 1933 and came to Nobles in Class V. He was a terrific three-sport athlete whose skill and “undying spirit” made him an asset to the soccer and hockey teams. It was also at Nobles that he was introduced to the sport of rowing, leading to a lifetime of “passion and dedication that would touch thousands of lives beyond his own.” After Nobles, Perry attended Dartmouth College and then joined the faculty of Kent School for more than 40 years. He leaves a tremendous legacy within the rowing community. Throughout his life, Perry held numerous coaching positions at Dartmouth, Kent School and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, among others. He also worked as an official at numerous world championships, including the World Rowing Championships, the Olympic Games, and, in 1974, he became the first non-British citizen to be elected a steward of the Henley Royal Regatta. He served as the president of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen (predecessor to USRowing) and was the Executive Director of the National Rowing Association. Perry received numerous honors throughout his career, including the U.S. Rowing Medal of Honor, the 2010 World Rowing Distinguished Service to Rowing Award, and induction into the National Rowing Hall of Fame. David Perry ’59 died peacefully on January 23, 2011, in San Francisco, Calif., after a long battle with cancer. Perry was born in 1940 and grew up in Dedham. He attended Dexter School with a number of his soon-to-be Nobles classmates and lifelong friends, including the late Edward Bond ’58, Whitford “Whit” Bond ’59, Richard “Dick” Frazee ’59 and William “Bill” Frederick ’59. At Nobles, he played soccer and tennis; was a member of the Debating and Dramatics Club; and was on the Nobleman Board. After Nobles, Perry attended Amherst College and then Law School at Berkeley. Ultimately, he settled in San Francisco and worked at Kaiser for many years before becoming their General Counsel. His classmates write that, “Dave was very loyal to his Nobles classmates, attending most Reunions and quietly sponsoring many class events. His kind and gentle approach to life
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will be sorely missed. Our 50th Class Reunion in 2009 was one of Dave’s happiest memories as well as the trip in 2007 to France that he enjoyed with several classmates in Strasbourg and Paris. It was on this trip that he hosted one of our most memorable dinners.” John Warren ’64 died at his home in Natick on February 6, 2011. He was born in Boston and grew up in Dedham. Warren spent six years at Nobles, where he was a member of Deutscher Verein and the Dramatic Club. He attended Harvard College and then pursued his studies of German language and literature at the German for Foreigners Institute in Munich and at the University of Indiana. Warren’s lifelong vocation and talent was in music, beginning in his childhood with the study of piano. In the 1964 yearbook, his classmates noted that he would be “best remembered for his diverting performances on (and off) the music room piano.” Later, he studied composition with Herman Weiss and composed numerous pieces, including string quartets, piano sonatas, symphonies, concerti and other chamber music. Warren leaves his sisters, Janet Rogers and Constance Mery; his brother Richard; and numerous nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews. Kim Smith; An Appreciation Kim Smith, longtime business manager at Noble and Greenough, died at his home in Concord, Mass., this winter. We asked former Head of School Dick Baker to share his memories of Smith. Kim Smith was one of those individuals who came across as larger than life—an ebullience of humor, a stentorian voice, a directness in his approach to almost everything and an inspirational generosity of spirit. While forceful when it was necessary, his personality was geared more to tact and diplomacy, listening carefully and drawing others out. Optimism was his hallmark, and he sprinkled it liberally in all aspects of his life. He was a man of independent schools, possessed of an eclectic resume that spanned the full range from teacher/coach to headmaster with lots of administrative experience in between. He came to Nobles as something of a knight in shining armor prepared to rescue the school after a particularly devastating administrative loss. Ben Lawson, the venerable Business Manager for decades, who had superbly guided the school financially for decades, had
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retired in spring 1979. An able replacement lasted only a few months and then decided the job was not to his liking. He departed immediately. Headmaster Ted Gleason drew on an old friendship, asking Kim to become the Business Manager (Kim had probably planned a few gentle years of retirement after serving as the Head of Fenn for nearly a decade.) But, he rode in, took control and at least in the years of the late ’80s and early ’90s, was the primary force for upgrading the entire institutional infrastructure. He was, in a sense, the architect for much of the school that exists today. In 1987, he must have an almost overwhelming sense of increased responsibility when the tried (Gleason) was replaced by the untried (Baker). I often wondered whether he asked himself, “do I have enough still in me to break in a new Head?” He did and he did, and I was always the wiser for his counsel. The image of the knight whose role was always slanted toward rescue was reinforced by Kim’s most magical innovation, a kind of alchemical transmutation of base metal into gold. At moments when decisions about the construction of new buildings teetered on the knife-edge of the achievement of the Development Office and time pressure was acute, Kim always found a financial way to resolution. And, because of him and his replacement, Bill Chamberlin, the buildings went up—one, two, three, four, five. No single person was as responsible for that architectural transformation as Kim Smith. And, to take that transformation one step further, the school’s identity, its psyche, differs today because of what Kim accomplished. As Churchill once said, “We shape buildings and then our buildings shape us.” In a sense Kim is still “shaping us.” His final years must have been difficult. He lost the power of his legs in his later years because of a youthful skiing accident and finally was confined to a wheelchair. But if the word “indomitable” deserves application to any human being, I think Kim qualifies. Nobles owes him prodigious applause. —Dick Baker