PC AL L star
An institutional treasure, that’s what he is. In his fifth decade at Penn Charter, Steve Bonnie shifts his focus from admissions to development.
by Connie Langland
O
n the last day of ninth grade English, Steve Bonnie deploys one technique, then another to drill his students on the ins and outs of punctuation. First, he seeks to get them to figure out for themselves where to place the comma, the semicolon or the period in various runon sentences. But then his nature gets the best of him. He moves to the middle of the room, with students’ desks forming a wide circle around him. “How do we use a comma?” Bonnie asks. He then proceeds not to tell them, but to show them. He takes a few steps, pauses one beat, takes a few steps more. That pause suggests a comma, he says. Next, he takes a few steps, pauses for two, three beats, then takes a few steps more. “There’s your semicolon.” And the finale: A few steps, a HOP and then he stops cold. “Voila! That’s a period for you.” The class is amused, though not surprised. Bonnie will use any ploy, will coddle, cajole, implore and even insinuate dire consequences to get his students and his athletes to perform. And they do. Over the course of four decades, Bonnie has served Penn Charter as a teacher, coach, academic advisor and director of admissions. This fall, he has given up the admissions post to become director of stewardship, a new position with the development office created as Head of School Darryl J. Ford looks forward to a capital campaign that will fund the new strategic vision for the future of Penn Charter. “The new post is somewhat open-ended,” Bonnie said. “I’ll steward
a number of endowed funds – the school has more than 100 – some of which are active, some less active, and we’ll see if we can crank them up a bit. And, I’ll be working with certain individual donors, particularly people I know – and I know many people because I’ve been around for a hundred years. And I’ll work with reunion committees, particularly guys I went to school with, or students I taught.” And consider this: Stephen A. Bonnie OPC ’66 has been associated with Penn Charter either as a student or as a teacher, coach, administrator for more than 50 years, from 1960 to 2012, so, yes, he knows many, many PC alumni and former parents. Bonnie, 64, started at Penn Charter in seventh grade and graduated in 1966. He returned to coach soccer and track in 1970, the same year he graduated from Temple University. He was named head track coach in 1976 and began teaching English at the school later that year. He was named admissions director in 1982, succeeding Ralph Palaia Hon. 1689. By then he had acquired a master’s in English education and later earned a doctorate in educational leadership, both from Temple. Bonnie describes Palaia as “legendary,” both as a longtime admissions director and as baseball coach, and there are those who say the same of Bonnie. To many PC colleagues, students and alumni, he is simply unforgettable, and not just because of the notecards and variously colored pens in his pocket or the Adidas Sambas on his feet. Sterling Johnson OPC ’78 still recalls the day back in the 1970s when Bonnie persuaded him to join the track team. “Dr. B walked over – and he was very direct – he asked me, ‘What
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