Craig Thorn IV, Beloved Teacher, Dies at Age 47

 June 14, 2006

ANDOVER, Mass. — Craig Thorn IV, 47, of Andover, died Monday, June 12, 2006 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston after a two-and-a-half-year battle against cancer. For twenty-six years a member of the English Department at Phillips Academy, he has shaped countless students’ lives, inspired his colleagues, stamped his character on the Academy with his boundless creative energy, and nurtured a loving family.

He was born on December 14, 1958, in Hudson, New York, a storied place and region of which he was proud, and to which he was loyal. Whatever trajectories his rich life would trace, his teaching was always informed and tempered by the vivid curiosities and fertile friendships of the upstate New York town life. Having graduated from Hudson High School in 1976, he entered Dartmouth College, where his gift for the language, his indefatigable creativity and magnetic personality found fruition. He was an avid skier, unrelenting tennis player and deft left-handed pool shooter, a skill he honed as a member of Alpha Theta fraternity.

Among his most cherished college experiences was a personal and professional friendship with Ted Geisel. With Dr. Seuss as his mentor, he was well on his way to a variegated career as teacher, writer, house counselor, coach, professional editor, music critic, radio broadcasting personality, founder of a score of campus literary magazines, and an ideal institutional propellant for a school about to enter a new millennium.

Hired as a Teaching Fellow at Andover in 1980, he joined the faculty as Instructor in English after earning a Masters Degree in English from Brown in 1982. He mastered the works of the satirists Swift and Twain, specialized in The Romantic Poets and Shakespeare, and after a sabbatical to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1991–1992, made Native American, Central and South American Literature his specialty. His classroom was a hothouse of intellect, a haven of hip, and a profound reservoir of teacherly love. He served a term as English Department Chair from 1995–2001, a time of exciting growth and experimental flowering, and helped shape policy and give direction to the school in its non-academic functions.

It was as a house counselor (Eaton Cottage, Bishop Hall and Thompson House) where he struck his most enduring ties with his students, and as general manager of the student radio station WPAA where he rose to cult status, not just on campus, but at the farthest reaches of the station’s signal in far-flung New England. His encyclopedic knowledge of and voracious appetite for all kinds of music kept the station at the vanguard of a true world movement. In his spare time, he ran two educational publishing houses, helping many of his colleagues publish professional essays about teaching.

His work was his fun, his family’s life his purpose. He wove his family both into the school’s fabric and the town’s, where he was an avid and generous supporter of a host of youth activities and civic groups. He is survived by his wife Andrea, his son Alex, and his daughter Kelsey, all of Andover; his father Craig Thorn III and his mother Edwina of Hudson, New York; his brother Doug, wife Denise and three children of Loudonville, New York; sister Stacy and her two children of Norcross, Georgia; and his father-in-law Laszlo Papp of New Canaan, Connecticut.