The weekend was topped off with
Saturday evening’s gala
celebration event – cocktails, dinner and dancing to
New York City’s Rhythm Dogs Band – marking the
closing of the Ever Always campaign. In addition
to the photo gallery below, more photos from the weekend can
be found within the Alumni
section of this Web site.
Hardwick Hall and History
Remarks by John
C. Bogle, Class of 1947
Chairman Emeritus, Blair Academy
June 6, 2009
In his wonderful Sesquicentennial
History of Blair Academy, written in 1991, the author, Arthur Hamlin,
Class of 1929, anticipated the 150th anniversary of our founding
in 1848. We have now moved well into the next 150 years for
our beloved Academy, and today we celebrate yet another landmark.
This is an historic day.
Today we dedicate Blair’s newest
hall, the fifth new (or totally reconstructed) structure
to arise on our lovely campus since 1989, following Bogle
Hall, Armstrong-Hipkins Hall, Timken Library, and Annie (Ann
Siegel) Hall. But our celebration will have to wait just
a moment. For I want to pause to salute a man who played
the most critical role in Blair’s modern history; a
man who, in the dark days of the mid-1960s, ensured our Academy’s
very existence; a man who is the exemplar of the character
and integrity that Blair Academy has helped to develop
in so many of us who have come through these halls, and
have studied here, and learned here; a man whose dedication
shines like a beacon among those who came before him and
inspires, to this historic day, those of us who followed.
I refer, of
course, to J. Brooks Hoffman, M.D., Class of 1936, who
has joined us for this celebration. Dr. Hoffman has served
on our Board of Trustees since 1958—that’s more
than half a century!—serving as its chairman from 1962
to 1978, more than sixteen years, as far as I can tell the
longest such service in our history. So let us take a moment
to salute Brooks Hoffman for his priceless, eternal role,
his indispensable role, in bringing us to this moment.
In just a
few weeks our present Headmaster will complete his own
twenty years as our leader, the third longest tenure of any
Blair Headmaster in history, just short of the 22 year tenure
of Dr. James Howard. It may be too much to expect Chan to
break the record of 29 years of service by our legendary
Dr. John C. Sharpe. But I can dream, can’t I?
I’ve had
the privilege of serving as a Blair Trustee ever since 1972,
and of serving as Chairman from 1986 to 2001, both terms
well short of Brooks’ tenure. But I’ve
done my best to serve with the kind of dedication and commitment
that Brooks exemplified, and we’ve accomplished much,
I think, during that long term. If you don’t believe
me, well, just look around. This new hall is but the latest
tangible example that cries out—with words such as renaissance,
progress, and excellence—for all of us to hear, to revel
in our Academy’s accomplishments.
Sure, it takes resources
to do what we’ve done. Yes,
money. But it also takes other resources, most notably human
beings, with ambition, energy, brains, determination and
leadership skills. Chan Hardwick has been our leader for
two decades now, and whatever I may have done to help rebuild
our Academy—in
building and in planning, in providing scholarship funds,
in finance and in investment, in determination and in devotion—my
proudest accomplishment is having persuaded Chan to come
to Blair, to build Blair, and to lead our return to our
position as one of the leading independent boarding schools
in our nation. That Chan Hardwick has done.
Of course our Headmaster
didn’t do it alone. Without
faculty members with the talents of a Rick Clarke and a Marty
Miller; without a dean of students with the talents of a David
Low; without the dedication and long and loyal service of a
Dennis Peachy; without, well, a cast of scores of masters and
administrators and staff members too numerous to identify by
name, we could have accomplished but a small fraction of our
remarkable progress. Chan’s wife and partner, Monie,
also played an essential role in our resurgence. She was at
the very epicenter of our renaissance, deeply committed to
our Academy, our community, and our students, setting an example
of dedication that is impossible to understate, especially
in her leadership of the Capital Campaign we have just completed.
Chan and Monie have, literally, given themselves—their
very lives—to this noble cause that is subsumed by the
simple name, “Blair Academy.”
When Arthur Hamlin
wrote that history of Blair way back in 1991, two years
after Chan became Headmaster, he came to a conclusion that
has a special meaning to me. Here are his words: “There
should be no worries for the future with the team of Jack
Bogle and Chan Hardwick shaping Blair’s destiny into
the new century.” As soon as I read those words, I knew
I’d
have to give my very best to make them come true. And that’s
what we’ve tried to do together, and I hope you will
agree that Arthur’s prediction has proved prophetic.
In my foreword to the Hamlin history,
I quoted these words from John W. Gardner, describing the
beauty of “that
fine moment when an institution is responding with vigor
and relevance to the needs of its day, when morality and vitality
are high, when it holds itself to unsparing standards of
performance.” That
fine moment is now, and the leadership of Chan—and
Monie—has
been critical to its realization.
So how do we say, “thank
you”? The best way that
I could imagine would be to name this wonderful new building
in their honor—“Chandler and Monie Hardwick Hall”.
So we’ll now do exactly that: It is Hardwick Hall that
we dedicate today. This designation expresses our deep gratitude,
and will ingrain their names and their remarkable contribution
to Blair in our history. So let Hardwick Hall be remembered
not only as a monument, if you will, to their leadership,
but to the wonderful era of friendship, mutual support, and
cooperation and, yes, love that has united the Hardwick and
Bogle families in common cause.
I use the word love not casually, but
advisedly. Almost everyone here today must know these words
that we sing in our alma mater: “To
thee old Blair, our hearts are ever true, our love for thee
shall last the long years through.” And absolutely everyone
here must know the final phrase, “Ever, always, dear
old Blair.” (After all, that’s the theme of the
Capital Campaign we’ve just completed with such extraordinary
success!) But few of you, I’ll bet, know the song’s
title. So let’s go back in history to the title chosen
by its composer, H.C. Thorpe, Class of 1919. He must be smiling
down from above as I cite his title: “The “Blair
Love Song.” The Blair Love Song. My heartfelt words on
this historic occasion represent my own love song to this Academy—the
place that shaped my long career, my values, and my life.
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