January 21, 2008

Dear Rectory School Family and Friends:

I am writing to let you know that Virginia and I decided to make the 2008-2009 school year our last one at Rectory.  It has been a privilege to serve as headmaster since 1990.  We have been blessed to work with and embrace so many engaging young people, whose sense of spirit and enthusiasm brought us personal joy, even on the gloomiest of New England days.  It has been a privilege to work with dedicated men and women, who daily gave of themselves for the benefit of others.  We worked with countless parents, past parents, alumni, grandparents, and trustees who devoted talent and resources to support and assist us in creating a community which lives out the true meaning of the school creed – Responsibility, Respect, Honesty, and Compassion.

In my time as headmaster, I devoted myself tirelessly to the community and significant progress has been made.  Our March Experiential Learning Program, faculty banding, and the elementary program are models for other schools to follow. We have adapted and revised our curriculum to meet the needs of our students as citizens in the twenty-first century.  We have a nationally accredited pre-school program, there has been remarkable growth in our annual fund, setting record breaking numbers over the last five years, we have introduced girl boarders, and we have a culture that celebrates and respects the diversity in all of us. 

During my tenure, we have seen a facilities expansion like none in the school’s history - new science classrooms and an expanded day room, the Tang Center, the Hamilton Dormitories, the art barn, and the dining hall.  In addition, we expanded the library, renovated the main house, and made handsome space available for the CARe and elementary school programs.

I have reminded myself daily that we are here to serve the needs of the children on campus, and playing a small part in helping our students to prepare for and grow toward honorable adulthood has been its own reward.  Virginia and I have loved our association with the children here, and being part of their lives.  Furthermore, our own family has been raised in this community.  Our twins, Catherine and Elizabeth, were born just two months after we arrived on campus, all five of our daughters were educated here, and one now teaches here. 

It will be difficult to say goodbye.  Change, however, is a fact of life.  The time has come for us to move on to other responsibilities and opportunities, and for the school to have new leadership for the next decade.  Virginia and I will always be grateful to the many people who have provided unstinting support and warm friendship over the years.  Abraham Lincoln said, “Let us hope that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, in the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness whose course shall be onward and upward and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”

I believe that Rectory School is on an “onward and upward” course, now and into the distant future.  To be a part of this enduring moral and intellectual growth has been an honor and a privilege. 

With warmest regards,

Thomas F. Army, Jr.