Milton Magazine - Milton Academy

Retiring in 2008William M. MooreJoined the faculty in 1978Dottie PittA number of years ago, beforeword processors and email, shededicated her summer to writinga spelling curriculum for theLower School, ferrying the workback and forth from the Vineyardto Kathy Burek in Falmouth—collaboration across the ocean!For the last six years she hastaken on administrative tasks,first as assistant principal of theLower School and the past twoas interim principal. Duringher tenure as interim principal,she also served on the senioradministrative council, fieldedparental concerns, acted as liaisonto the Lower School ParentsAssociation and the DiversityCommittee, and managed hiringand evaluation of faculty.Dottie includes and recognizesher staff members in the Miltoncommunity, sensing needsbefore they are expressed, offeringsupport or comfort at justthe right time, and bringingeveryone “into the fold.” Herenergy is remarkable—she probablyholds the record for fastesttime covering the distancebetween Greenleaf and theJunior Building—as is her abilityto “think outside the box” orsimply to offer a joke to relievethe tension.Outside of her busy life atMilton, Dottie is a committed,fun-loving, and caring individual.She checks in with faculty andstaff colleagues every morningand still has time to planher daily agenda. An efficientworker, she maintains a fullslate of “extracurricular” activities,including singing in theBack Bay Chorale in Boston. Aself-reliant adventurer at heart,Dottie, along with her husband,Chris, has climbed manyof the peaks and dipped intomany of the ponds in the WhiteMountains of northern NewEngland.We are thankful for Dottie’swisdom, humor, and spirit ofcollaboration over her nearly 20years at Milton, and we wish herall the best in the years to come.Rick HardyInterim Head of SchoolBill Moore cannot be with usthis afternoon. He is somewherebetween here and Tijuana,tracing the route of a cross-countryroad trip that his father tookas a 21-year-old in 1926. This is atypical Bill Moore project, a combinationof meticulous scholarlypreparation and high aestheticpleasure. Working with a vintageroad map and his father’s journals,he has pinpointed the site ofeach of 182 photos in an albumfrom the trip and will, À la recherchedu temps perdu, replicate themwith his own camera. He asksus to think of him “perched on ahigh rock in a national park, photographingwith a ‘Kodak Junior’and writing about all I feel andsee, happy to be alive.”Many at Milton Academy, in the30 years since Bill arrived here,have been happily infected withthe joie de vivre that he brought tohis work. An academician to thecore, he was so much more thanan academician that no whiff ofchalk dust ever clung to him, andhe moved instead through theSchool day like an artist blotchedwith the bright drips from hislatest canvas or humming a fewbars of a new composition. Yes,his classes—whether in French,the subject that he originallycame to Milton to teach, or inEnglish, to which we welcomedhim enthusiastically during a dipin French enrollment 15 yearsago—were about plumbing thestructure of language and explicatingtext. But they were alsoabout inhaling, as deeply as possible,the spirit of an intellectuallife. His comments on studentpapers took the form of cultivatedconversation—usually gentle andappreciative, often in the form ofquestions rather than answers,sometimes breaking out into slyhumor. My son, who relishesa satirical barb even when it isaimed his way, was delighted toreceive a note instructing himto push the spell-check buttonbecause “correct spelling lends acertain cachet to bombast.”On behalf of his students, Billwas always working to get literatureto stand up from the pageand dance. Because Shakespearemeant more on the stage than itever could in the classroom, heorganized a trip whenever therewas a production in town. Anaccomplished cook, he markedthe end of To the Lighthouse byreenacting the great dinnerparty scene, complete with Mrs.Ramsay’s boeuf en daube. LikeMrs. Ramsay, he knew how tomake people around a tableawaken to each other, a skillequally valuable to hostesses andteachers.Colleagues, too, enjoyed Bill’stalent for organizing revelry. Onthe day he was dubbed MasterTeacher in an all-School assembly,he laid on a dancing girl towarm up the crowd. Becausehe found himself temperamentallyunsuited to the position ofacademic dean, his tenure in itwas rather brief; what sticks inmemory is the panache of thefaculty shindig that he organizedto lift us out of one winter’s doldrumsand christened, impishly,“The Other Dean’s Ball.” On asmaller scale, the delicacies andamenities that he supplied forEnglish department sherry hourslent refinement to what mightotherwise have devolved intoafternoons of grumpy shop talk.The word “glamour,” etymologiststell us, derives directly fromthe word “grammar”: it is themagical aura that plays aboutdeep learning. Bill fused theseprinciples perfectly, often makingthe glamour so delightful that80 Milton Magazine