Letter from the Head of School

State of the Arts

At Mercersburg, we tend to go about our days without much consciousness
of how routine actions and encounters can connect a person to the school
in deep and abiding ways. Often, the processes of age, reflection, and
distance serve to bring the significance of those encounters into focus,
and people decide to examine more closely the role this school has played
in the choices they make in living their lives.

On a single day in December, I spoke with an alumnus who wanted to find creative
ways to bring exceptionally talented students with exceptional financial need to
Mercersburg; read an email from another alumnus who sought an appropriate method
to honor a beloved Mercersburg teacher, who had profoundly shaped his own desire to
become an architect; and showed a visiting college professor, on campus for an admission
visit with his son, the name of his grandfather (a 1934 graduate and Olympic medalist in
swimming) on the plaque at the Irvine Memorial honoring Mercersburg’s Olympians.

Each example vividly illustrates how past encounters here can inform and shape
people’s choices, actions, and decisions.

Similarly strong ties and connections were abundant and evident during the Burgin
Center opening celebration the first weekend of November (page 24). Every person
present encountered an extraordinary moment in the life of this great school, a moment
deeply connected not only with the school’s present, but also with its past and future.
In an essay entitled “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot references
this phenomenon when he observes, “what happens when a new work of art is
created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.”
Although Eliot was describing the connectedness of all writing, he could just as easily have
been speaking about meaningful human encounters of any kind, or the creation of a magical
new teaching and learning space. Of course, the ultimate magic of any new space is in
the encounters that students will invariably have there with one another, with their teachers,
with their own work, and with special guests of all kinds this year and in years to come.

Another significant encounter that means a great deal to me is the one between
you and what you hold now in your hands: this collection of words and images and ink
on paper that has traveled from Mercersburg. This redesigned magazine holds familiar
substance and subject matter within a lively—but simple—visual framework. We
hope that it warrants close reading and that you will also bring to it affection for and
connection to this good place.

Douglas Hale
Head of School