In 1995, Mason retired to Palm Harbor, Florida, a quiet suburb of Tampa, but he is still clearly on the mind of his former students. Last year, Joe Alsop ’63 and his wife Christiane endowed the position heading Suffield’s English Department as the Mason Nye Chair in English. This is the second teaching chair the Alsops have endowed at Suffield, following the Leon Waskiewicz Math Chair. To learn more about the man who inspired this generosity, and perhaps with the hope that his insights would help me in my own teaching vocation, I traveled to Palm Harbor for a visit with Mason in February. Mason lives with his wife of seven years, Joy, a former elementary school literary arts teacher. Of Joy, Mason says, “I hit the jackpot again.” Joy taught for years in southern Florida, in an environment very different from Mason’s experience at Suffield. Like Mason, though, she relayed anecdotes that spoke to a deep love for helping her students. Just as he once enjoyed his time in the Air Force “because it gave me time to read,” Mason is taking advantage of retirement by getting back to devouring both works of fiction and non-fiction. He is always working on two or three books at once and has taught in several settings in the Palm Harbor community. Mason currently leads a group dedicated to contemporary literature at a local library, though he says, “They are such good readers, I do no teaching at all.” Stories of Mason’s hockey coaching at Suffield—and the duties that went with it, like watering the outdoor rink until three in the morning to ensure it stayed frozen—are legendary. And while recent injuries have curtailed the former tennis coach’s thrice-weekly games, Mason’s mind for teaching is as sharp as ever. We spoke at length about his experiences before, at, and after Suffield, and I was fortunate to learn about Mason’s detailed teaching philosophy.
Christiane and Joe Alsop ’63
One of Mason’s formative experiences was his time in the Wesleyan M.A.L.S. program. This included both literary background and student teaching opportunities. Mason calls Ernest Stabler’s History of Education course, with a particular emphasis on the practical teaching methods of John Dewey, “one of the best things I ever did,” and he also found his time teaching in Hartford and Portland, Connecticut, quite rewarding.
Mason finished the Wesleyan program in 1958, and, like many of Suffield’s long-time faculty members, was then hired here by the dynamic young headmaster, Ap Seaverns. Together with his close friend Gordy Glover, Mason designed the entire English program, laying out what books students would read and when they would read them. “Everything,” he says, “was like that. We were very lucky to be teaching at Suffield. What could be better? It was a little, growing school.” Mason speaks fondly of these early days as incredibly exciting. “As you grew,” he says, “the school grew around you.” Mason feels strongly that a school’s morale is determined in large measure by its students, and in the early days especially, he says, “There was an incredible spirit.” Among those spirited students was Joe Alsop, a young man with an intense interest in learning and technology. Joe’s enthusiasm, combined with those passions, had run him into a bit of trouble in the past: he was asked to leave his previous school after planting electronic listening devices in the headmaster’s office. Despite the warnings the old headmaster sent around the boarding school community, and perhaps recognizing an implied risk to his own privacy, Suffield Headmaster Winter 2013 | 7