I n M e mor i a m FACULTY EMERITI
John Richards II Exeter, N.H.; Oct. 5, 2013 Jack Richards, beloved teacher, coach, house counselor, and dean, died peacefully on October 5, 2013, at 81. The son of a Groton classics teacher, Jack came naturally to teaching. After Groton, Harvard, and service as a captain in the U.S. Air Force, he arrived at Andover as one of the first teaching fellows in 1957. For the next 40 years, Jack and his wife, Wendy, were central figures in the Andover community and in the lives of thousands of students, modeling the independent school tradition of the “triple threat”: teacher, coach, house counselor. After Jack’s death, the Academy website was showered with tributes from alumni, whose memories of living in the Richards’s dorms, of Jack’s classes in Russian and European history, and of his gifted leadership of the track and field program all made inspiring reading. As Tony Maranto ’75 wrote in a post, “Jack was an ambassador for the satisfaction that comes with learning.” Jack spoke and acted with authority, grace, and humor and never lost his excitement at embarking on the great adventure he believed education to be. JR—as he was known to his colleagues—taught his students to develop interesting historical questions, to trust their interpretations of the evidence, to assert their conclusions with confidence, and to have fun doing it. He peppered classes with stories of Khrushchev pounding his shoe at the U.N., of Anthony Blunt casually betraying his country while appraising old masters for the Queen, of the BashiBazouks, and of the Sanjak of Novi Bazar. Students thrilled to his accounts of the defenestration of Prague and Rasputin’s grisly last hours. Many still treasure tattered copies of Palmer’s History of the Modern World, and an astonishing number followed him into teaching, including, at the time of his retirement in 1997, four Andover history colleagues. His passion for Russian history led him to coauthor From Russia to USSR and Beyond in 1983. Captain of the 1954 Harvard track team, Jack coached winter and spring track at Andover
beginning in 1958, turning the program into a perennial New England powerhouse that won interscholastic championships in 1971 and 1972 and four times between 1980 and 1984. After resigning as head coach in 1984 because of his administrative duties, he remained an assistant coach, helping Andover teams win additional interscholastic crowns in 1989, 1991, and 1996. House counselors for 30 years, Jack and Wendy opened their homes and kitchens, becoming substitute parents to legions of kids away from home. Considered strict but scrupulously fair, the Richardses formed strong relationships with students, many of whom remained close friends throughout their lives. In 1965, headmaster John Kemper appointed Jack to a steering committee to review the Academy’s broad educational program. This group produced the 1967 report that initiated more basic changes at Andover than at any time in its history: coeducation, second-chance discipline, the cluster system, trimester courses, 0–6 grading, increased interdisciplinary learning, and diversification of both the student body and the faculty. During the 1970s and 1980s, as dean of students and then dean of faculty, Jack assumed responsibility for overseeing implementation of these goals, fulfilling the committee’s intention that Andover adopt “a spirit of optimistic venture.” Few teachers in the history of the institution have had more influence on the Academy’s development. Jack’s devotion to service ran well beyond Andover. In retirement he took an active role in educational activities in his adopted towns of Sunapee, N.H.; Naples, Fla.; and Exeter, N.H. First among his many commitments—what he once called his “cause of a lifetime”—was the Mayhew Program for at-risk boys on Newfound Lake in New Hampshire. Jack joined the then Groton School Camp at 17, serving for years as counselor, assistant director, and director before playing a central role in GSC’s transition to the Mayhew Program in the 1960s. He remained an active trustee until his death. Above all, Jack’s family was the center of his life and love. He leaves Wendy, his wife of 58 years and former cluster dean at Andover; his children, Laura ’74, Christopher ’81, Timothy ’81, and C.C. ’82; and 13 grandchildren. He was predeceased by his daughter Pamela ’76. As Jack taught the past, he shaped the present and guided the future of thousands of students and colleagues and of the Academy itself. If we agree with Yeats that “teaching is lighting a fire, not filling a bucket,” Jack built bonfires. A memorial service celebrating his life was held on campus in Cochran Chapel on December 7.
—Catherine Richards Stockly ’82 & Victor W. Henningsen ’69, Independence Foundation Instructor in History and Social Science Emeritus [Editor’s note: For more about Jack Richards, see Tales Out of School, page 120.]
Hilda S. Whyte South Yarmouth, Mass.; Sept. 12, 2013 Hilda (Stroop) Whyte filled her 90-year-long life to the brim with enriching pursuits. A devoted and supportive helpmate to her husband, Jim, who served as Andover’s protestant chaplain in the mid- ’60s and ’70s, and mother to three children, she taught physics and science at Abbot Academy beginning in 1967. After the school’s 1973 merger with Phillips Academy, she taught science at PA—eventually chairing the department—until she retired in 1985. In retirement on Cape Cod, she was an inveterate traveler, a volunteer (she helped shingle a house for Habitat for Humanity), and a participant in classes as well as a teacher and volunteer at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Cape Cod Community College. She was also an avid and talented amateur photographer and artist, a gardener, and a patron of the arts on the Cape and in Boston. In 1929, when Ms. Whyte was a young child, her family emigrated from Germany and settled in Michigan. She earned a BA degree at Michigan State University, and later earned an MS at Tufts University while concurrently teaching, coaching tennis, and performing the usual cluster jobs of chaperoning, academic advising, and Commons duty, as well as helping Jim through a serious illness that eventually claimed his life in 1975. “She was a remarkable and talented individual,” said her daughter Kristin ’70. “Her active and engaged life was an inspiration to those who knew her.” Along with her children, Robin, Eric, and Kristin, Ms. Whyte is survived by six grandchildren.
ABBOT AND PHILLIPS 1928 William H. Frank Jacksonville, Fla.; Sept. 19, 2013 William “Bill” Frank died just eight days after celebrating his 104th birthday. He attributed his longevity to faith, family, and friends, but most of all to Ruth (Abbot Academy Class of 1928), his wife of 74 years, who died in 2010 at age 99. Mr. Frank was active in mind and body up until his death. He went Andover | Winter 2014
117