And we talk about the pace of change?

I had the opportunity this past weekend to revisit the Class of 1962 Vestigia. This yearbook is labeled "Volume 1" as it was the first for the School in its new home in Winchendon MA and with a new name. At the end of the prior academic year, the Board had decided to move the Hatch School to what has proved to be a wonderful new home.

What I find stunning is not just the foresight that the Board and Headmaster Robert Marr showed in making this decision, but also the amount of change that Mr. Marr successfully guided the School through during these first years in Winchendon. According to Mr. Marr's comments, only six faculty members made the move to Winchendon, and more than half the students were new to the School that fall. However, in those early years the stage was set for what has been an incredible five decades of advancement.

There are moments today during which we may think that we are marshaling the School through an important period of change. We implement the Global Dynamics program. We steadily introduce new technology. We renew older facilities including the Rotenberg Arts Studios, Posich and Ford Hall, and we build new including the tennis courts, now the new residence hall, or soon the new indoor field with the Clark Memorial.

However, these are nothing like the changes that The Winchendon School went through in the early 1960's. The Vestigia staff captured The School's spirit very well in the yearbook's introduction:

When a new idea appears among men, it is welcomed - sometimes with tumult, sometimes with joy - but always with an avid interest in each progressive step. A new school year, a new campus, a new name - indeed, our school is a new idea taking a child's first steps in the world of learning. Yet, like the Roman god, Janus, whose visage scanned both past and future, we look to the past for sowing and to the future for harvest...
The introduction continued...

"Vestigia", a Latin term for footsteps... In the motto - "Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum" - lies more than just a name; it is both a shadow of our theme and the substance of our hope - No Steps Backward. Only the future, which is big with promise, can bear out the aspirations that swell our thoughts today. We are assured, however, that meeting every challenge as it comes, we will see the footprints of the past firmly placed on solid ground and the footsteps of the future plain before our eyes.

I am in awe not just how well the Mr. Marr and the School thrived through its first decade but even more so how this group of students captured the culture of embracing change that is still a hallmark of The Winchendon School today. The School thrives and is a leader in our field of secondary education not just because of this eagerness to embrace change, but also because our mission and philosophy are well rooted thanks to the tilling of first Mr. Hatch and then Mr. Marr. Our future "is big with promise", our vision for the future is "plain before our eyes" just as the Vestigia staff captured it in 1962.

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Marr.