Beside a second-floor door jamb in McKeen Hall hangs a brass bell staffers in the Office of Academy Resources ring to celebrate receipt of major gifts to Phillips Academy.
With Campaign Andover’s final total of $232 million in gifts and pledges nailed over a year ago, one might think the fund-raising bell would muster no more than a few gentle clangs these days.
One would, however, be wrong.
When Secretary of the Academy Peter Ramsey gathered his colleagues around the gleaming tintinnabulum in midwinter, the pealing and squealing filled the air for three full minutes as fund-raisers and friend-raisers cheered a series of landmark donations. The gifts, which put this year’s tally on an even plane with campaign years, show alumni generosity did not slow down when the books were closed on the largest philanthropic drive in independent school history.
Indeed, some of the dings and the dongs marked receipt of one of just a handful of eight-figure gifts in the academy’s history, the only $10 million pledge ever made to the school anonymously. The treasure, from an alumnus whose name cannot be released for the time being, will go toward renovation of Commons, PA’s 74-year-old dining hall. Other bellstrokes celebrated the receipt of $2.5 million to seed renovation funds for the Memorial Bell Tower; the raising of monies to construct new faculty apartments in two residence halls; and the announcement of a $500,000 challenge gift to stimulate funding for the Peabody Museum endowment. (See Marshall Cloyd story, page 30.)
A LOT IN COMMONS
Commons, with its four large dining rooms plus the more intimate Blue Room and Ropes Salon, is familiar to every living person who has passed through Andover. A close reading of Andover Bulletin Class Notes reveals that folks frequently recall it best not for the food or the warm, honey-toned woodwork, but for the now-forbidden schoolboy practice of flinging butter pats onto the towering ceilings to see if one could make them stick. Younger generations focus their memories on the Ryley Room, a student social club in the Commons basement. The overall facility, though, is less sentimentally viewed by the school’s 75 food service workers, who labor under hot, relatively archaic conditions with outdated utility systems and food preparation areas.
For several years now, renewal of Commons has been talked about behind the scenes as the first post-Campaign Andover funding priority of the school. Fund-raisers have expressed fear it might be hard to inspire gifts for the estimated $14 million project, which lacks the glamour of buildings like the library, science center and museums. Now, says Ramsey, the huge lead gift for Commons will not only get the ball rolling on the project, but may even enable the school to consider more ambitious options. Recently a committee was assembled to think about innovative Commons programming. Should, for example, the lower left dining hall be expanded to accommodate an entire residential “cluster,” comprised of one-fifth of the school? Should smaller spaces be created for faculty and student group meetings? Is there a way to reconfigure Commons as more of a community center-cum-eatery?
“What this remarkable gift has done,” Ramsey says, “is allow us to think about renovating Commons not only sooner, but more creatively than we previously believed possible.”
A TOWERING NEED
Refurbishment of the 81-year-old bell tower, which is not just a recognizable icon for the academy and the Town of Andover, but also a memorial to 90 alumni who lost their lives in World War I, has tremendous emotional support from the PA community. Indeed, it was originally slated as a priority of Campaign Andover. However, when a gift of $11 million from the late Bristol-Myers Squibb President Richard L. Gelb ’41 allowed PA to undertake building a fully up-to-date science facility rather than simply renovate the outgrown Evans Hall, the bell tower project was set aside. Funding efforts were redirected at completing the new Gelb Science Center, which opened its doors in January.
Although few disputed that educational facilities must come first, the tower did not go away. Structural studies showed that, one way or another, the landmark would need a multimillion dollar reconstruction within a few years. The Class of 2003 voted to dedicate its senior class gift to the tower, and several older alumni quietly worked behind closed doors to remind the administration of the tower’s memorial significance.
This winter, major gifts from alumni Otis Chandler ’46 and Fred Jordan ’43 and a friend of Andover, Helen Donegan, were merged with the residual of a campaign gift by Board of Trustees President David M. Underwood ’54. The resulting $2.5 million nucleus fund was earmarked for work on the tower and its interior bells, which have long delighted members of the PA and Andover communities. While a full carillon restoration in the historic fashion would have added several million dollars more to the price tag of the project, Ramsey says trustees approved a total project cost of $5 million. Such a budget would not only allow for the rebuilding of the brick campanile, whose structural integrity and safety have become compromised over time, but restore the bells to a condition where they can be played through a computerized console at ground level, so students and townspeople can hear bell-music concerts once more.
OTHER BOONS
In addition, Ramsey says a $1.5 million gift received during the campaign from Tom Nebel ’49 and his wife, Laurel, will make it possible for work to begin soon on the construction of additional faculty apartments in Isham and Johnson halls. Since the campaign’s beginning, the Nebels have committed some $5 million to such dorm renovations, enabling the school to provide suitable living accommodations for more teachers while increasing students’ opportunities for interaction with adult role models in their dorms.
Such ample gifts, the secretary maintains, have a domino effect. By freeing up funds that might otherwise have been needed for campus renewal projects, they allow the administration to transfer money to other pressing priorities. Most notably, the trustees have diverted large sums away from facilities needs to improve the level of financial aid and keep tuition increases to a minimum. Meanwhile, fund raising for current operations and endowment support remains strong.
“It is highly gratifying,” Ramsey notes, “to see such extraordinary philanthropy nearly two years after the campaign’s end.”
—Theresa Pease |
Three alumni trustees retire this spring after completing four-year terms on the Board of Trustees: Paul Gallagher ’64, Lucy Thomson ’66, and George Bundy Smith Jr. ’83.
George Bundy Smith Jr. was formerly a news reporter for The Los Angeles Times and The (Portland) Oregonian and a television anchor at stations in New York City and New England. He is now a correspondent for ESPN, the cable sports channel, in Chicago. Smith has served Andover as a class agent, an alumni admission representative and a member of the leadership team of Campaign Andover. As trustee, he sat on the Academy Resource Committee, the Trustee Education Committee and the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) advisory board. He is also involved in Andover’s mentor program.
Paul Gallagher is president of Compass Strategic Consulting Corp. in New Haven, Conn. He was part of the leadership team of Campaign Andover and a non sibi agent for his class. He is currently head agent and co-reunion gift chair for his class’s 40th reunion. Gallagher has served on the Annual Giving Board since 1999. He has also worked four years as a co-chair of the board, the final two as Alumni Trustee. Claudia Arrigg Koh ’67 will replace Gallagher as alumni trustee.
Lucy Thomson, formerly a senior attorney with the Department of Justice, is currently a senior engineer at Computer Sciences Corporation in Washington, D.C. Thomson has served on the Trustee Building Committee and the Academy Resources Committee. She was formerly an event co-chair for Campaign Andover in Washington, D.C., and was co-president of the Andover/Abbot Regional Association in that city. As a member of the Alumni Council’s Executive Committee, she co-chaired the Regional Associations Committee. A charter member of the Friends of Andover Athletics, Thomson is a former National Women’s Intercollegiate Sailing Champion.
Alumni trustees, who also serve on the Alumni Council, are together with charter trustees responsible for the governance of the academy. As elected delegates to the Board of Trustees, they represent the alumni constituency at large. Two candidates from a slate of four alumni will be elected by a ballot recently sent to alumni, and new members will be announced late in the spring. Please exercise your important right to vote.
—Paula Trespas |
