1950 Deerfield Academy
The Pocumtuck Yearbook
Hardcover
Rodman Rockefeller SIGNED
Richard Mellon Scaife SIGNED
Edward Hoagland SIGNED
Many Autographs & Signatures
256 Pages
8” x 10.5”
Weighs 2 lbs. 5 oz.
1) Rodman Rockefeller SIGNED (1932-2000), philanthropist
2) Edward Hoagland SIGNED(born 1932), writer
3) Richard Mellon Scaife SIGNED (1932-2014), media mogul and philanthropist, "The Republican"
Rodman Clark Rockefeller (May 2, 1932 – May 14, 2000) was an American businessman and philanthropist. A fourth-generation member of the Rockefeller family, he was a son of former U.S. Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, a grandson of American financer John D. Rockefeller Jr., and a great-grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.
Rodman Rockefeller
Born Rodman Clark Rockefeller
May 2, 1932
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Died May 14, 2000 (aged 68)
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Education
Dartmouth College
Columbia University
Spouses
Barbara Ann Olson
(m. 1953; div. 1979)
Sascha von Metzler (m. 1980)
Children 4, including Meile Rockefeller
Parent(s)
Nelson Rockefeller
Mary Clark
Family
Rockefeller family
Rockefeller was born on May 2, 1932, in Manhattan, New York. He was the eldest son of former U.S. Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (1908–1979) and his wife Mary Todhunter "Tod" Clark (1908–1999).
He was educated at Deerfield Academy, at Dartmouth College, and later earned a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business Administration. At Dartmouth, his father's alma mater, he was a member of Green Key, co-edited Dartmouth's freshman handbook, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (as had his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Jr.)
Rockefeller was vice president (1968–1972) and chief executive (1972–1980) of the International Basic Economy Corporation, a New York based commercial genetics and agribusiness concern, founded by his father in 1946. Its activities included the development of corn production in Latin America, and the construction of thousands of low-cost homes in Mexico. He was chairman of IBEC Inc., a successor concern, from 1980 to 1985, and for a number of years was chairman of Arbor Acres Farm, based in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a seller of genetic material for poultry broiler stock.
Rockefeller was co-chairman of the Mexico-United States Business Committee, an organization focusing on economic and political issues of interest to both nations' business communities. Some consider the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the mid-1990s to have been the culmination of his and the committee's efforts.[citation needed] The honors he received included a prestigious Mexican decoration, the Order of the Aztec Eagle.
He was on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for nine years, and for many years was a trustee of Rockefeller Financial Services, the entity which manages the family's office (known as "Room 5600"), its investment companies, and its many foundations. He was the head of the finance committee of Rockefeller Financial Services for many years and was a longtime trustee of Rockefeller Financial's holding company, Rockefeller & Company.
Rockefeller served as chairman of Pocantico Associates, a private capital and real estate investment company, and was a trustee of the Institute of International Education, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, the Americas Society, and the New York Blood Center.
In 1953, Rockefeller married Barbara Ann Olsen, with whom he had four children:
Meile Rockefeller
Peter C. Rockefeller
Stuart Rockefeller
Michael Rockefeller
The marriage ended in divorce in 1979, and the following year he married Alexandra (Sascha) von Metzler. In 1987, Rockefeller's son Peter married Allison Whipple.
Rockefeller died at his home on New York's Upper East Side on May 14, 2000.
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Richard Mellon Scaife
Richard Mellon Scaife (/skeɪf/; July 3, 1932 – July 4, 2014) was an American billionaire, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, and the owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In 2005, Scaife was number 238 on the Forbes 400, with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. By 2013, Scaife had dropped to number 371 on the listing, with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion.
Richard Mellon Scaife
Born
July 3, 1932
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died
July 4, 2014 (aged 82)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education
Yale University (expelled)
University of Pittsburgh (BA)
Employer
Owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Known for
Conservative political involvement
Newspaper owner
Mellon family heir
Political party
Republican
Spouses
Frances L. Gilmore
(m. 1956; div. 1991)
Margaret "Ritchie" Battle
(m. 1991; div. 2012)
Children 2
Parents
Sarah Mellon
Alan Scaife
Relatives
Cordelia Scaife May (sister)
During his life, Scaife was known for his financial support of conservative public policy organizations over the past four decades. He provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the United States, mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controlled: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and Allegheny Foundation, and until 2001, the Scaife Family Foundation, now controlled by son David.
Scaife was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Alan Magee Scaife, the head of an affluent Pittsburgh family, and Sarah Cordelia Mellon, who was a member of the influential Mellon family, one of the most powerful families in the country.[6] Sarah was the niece of former United States Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon. She and her brother, financier R.K. Mellon, were heirs to the Mellon fortune that included Mellon Bank and major stakes in Gulf Oil and Alcoa aluminum.
Scaife attended high school at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts where he almost didn't graduate after getting caught drinking off campus at the age of 14.[7] He was expelled from Yale University in the aftermath of a drunken party in which he launched an empty beer keg down a flight of stairs, injuring a classmate. Yale gave him the opportunity to repeat his freshman year, but he continued to skip class and flunked out. With the help of his father, who was chairman of the board of trustees, he attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English in 1957.
Scaife inherited positions on several corporate boards in 1958 when his father Alan died unexpectedly. However, his family had become estranged from his uncle, R. K. Mellon, who retained control of the companies. His mother encouraged him to get involved in the family's philanthropic foundations, and he did so. (See management of Scaife family foundations.) He inherited much of the Mellon fortune when his mother died in 1965.
A portion of the fortune was placed in trust funds and the rest in foundations. The trusts expired in 1985 and, per tax law, the foundations must give away 5% of their assets per year. Disbursements from each foundation are done through boards of directors.
In 1973, he became estranged from his sister Cordelia and he took control of many of the family foundations while Cordelia supported her own charities, including Planned Parenthood and the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Shortly before her death, the siblings reconciled, and he eulogized her in January 2005,[11] lauding Cordelia for devoting her life and resources to "worthwhile causes".
Business
Purchase of the Tribune-Review
In 1970, Scaife purchased a small market newspaper, then known as the Tribune-Review. The paper was based in Greensburg, the county seat and center of Westmoreland County, located about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. For a number of years, the paper was published and distributed only in the Westmoreland area.
Scaife made headlines in the fall of 1973 when a Tribune-Review reporter was fired for making the remark "one down and one to go" during the Watergate era when Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned over corruption charges dating back to his days as governor of Maryland. In the controversy that followed nearly half the paper's 24 person newsroom staff resigned. In 1992, the two main newspapers in Pittsburgh were embroiled in a lengthy labor dispute that ultimately led the larger paper, the Pittsburgh Press, to cease operations, and for the remaining paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to suspend publication for nearly six months until the Post-Gazette acquired the Press late that year.
During this time, Scaife expanded operations of his newspaper into Pittsburgh. He essentially created a newspaper from the ground up and named it the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review while maintaining the Greensburg operation separately. He moved the Pittsburgh headquarters to the D. L. Clark building on Martindale Street on Pittsburgh's North Side.
Leadership and media interests
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review continues to challenge the Post-Gazette in the Pittsburgh media market. Twelve years after Scaife's newspaper began publishing, the Post-Gazette reported major financial losses, and the unions representing its employees agreed to wage concessions to keep it afloat. Unlike Scaife, the owners of the Post-Gazette, the Block family, were unwilling to sustain major losses year after year. According to the Scaife divorce papers, Richard Scaife has consistently spent between $20 and $30 million per year to cover the Tribune-Review's losses. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, the Tribune-Review has a combined 221,000 regional circulation, about 7,000 subscribers fewer than its competitor.
In 2005, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review announced that operations of its suburban editions would be consolidated, with "staff reductions" in the newsrooms, business, and circulation departments. Two managers were laid off immediately along with several other staff members later in 2005.
With Scaife as publisher, the small circulation newspaper was the chief packager of editorials and news columns claiming that then United States President Bill Clinton or his wife, then First Lady Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Scaife paid freelancer Christopher Ruddy to write about the Foster case for the Tribune-Review and other right-leaning media.[citation needed] Special Prosecutor Ken Starr, appointed to investigate Clinton, concluded Foster had, in fact, committed suicide.
In 2004, Scaife was reported to own 7.2 percent of Newsmax Media, a news-based Web site with conservative political content founded by Ruddy in 1998.[18] In 2009, Scaife reportedly controlled 42% of NewsMax, with Ruddy the 58% majority owner, CEO and editor.
Scaife owned a majority interest in Pittsburgh-based all-news radio station KQV.
From 1977 to 1989 Scaife owned the Sacramento Union newspaper in the state capital of Sacramento, California.
Political activities
According to his unpublished memoir, Scaife was motivated by concerns that the general trend towards liberalism in America would lead not just to inferior public policy but to the annihilation of American civilization.
While Scaife was not known for describing to others the motives or aims of his many contributions, in his book he tells of how he and a network of other influential conservatives called themselves "The League to Save Carthage", the name chosen because they believed the threat of political progressivism was so dire it could not even be compared to the decline of Rome in the face of barbarians. Rather the situation was closer to Ancient Carthage, which had been totally obliterated by Rome, a defeat Scaife and his fellow conservatives attributed to the passivity of its elites in the face of the enemy.
Support for Richard Nixon
As early as 1968, Scaife was actively involved at the highest levels of the Nixon campaign. He was appointed to lead the United Citizens for Nixon-Agnew during the fall of 1968.
Scaife gained notoriety for evading weak campaign finance laws to donate US$990,000 to the 1972 re-election campaign of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. Scaife was not charged with a crime, but about $45,000 went to a fund linked to the Watergate scandal. Scaife later said he was repulsed by the scandal and refused to speak with Nixon after 1973. Following Robert Duggan's suicide and then Watergate, he shifted his political giving from politicians' campaigns to anti-communist research groups, legal defense funds, and publications. During the scandal, John Ehrlichman suggested having Scaife buy out The Washington Post in a hostile takeover from Katharine Graham in order to halt Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting.
Opposition to Bill Clinton
Scaife's publications were substantially involved in coverage against then-President Bill Clinton:
Scaife was the major backer of The American Spectator, whose Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton and in which Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment against Clinton were first widely publicized.
On April 15, 1998, The New York Times revealed that Scaife had spent nearly $2 million on the project.
In a 1999 series of articles on Scaife and foundations that support conservative causes, The Washington Post named a close Scaife associate, Richard Larry, and not Scaife himself as the man who drove the Arkansas Project, while also acknowledging that Scaife was still the project's lead financier. The question of how political intellectualism was centered in the subject or in his key aides, such as Richard Larry, R. Daniel McMichael, or others, remains an open question.
The project not only accused Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions (some later verified, others not), but also gave root to conspiracist notions that the Clintons collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena, Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. The possibility that money from the project had been given to former Clinton associate David Hale, a witness in the Whitewater investigation, led to the appointment of Michael J. Shaheen as a special investigator. Shaheen subpoenaed Scaife, who testified before a federal grand jury in the matter.
In the fall of 2007, however, Ruddy published a positive interview with former President Clinton on Newsmax, followed by a positive cover story in the magazine. The New York Times noted with reference to the event that politics had made "strange bedfellows".
Newsweek reported that Ruddy praised Clinton for his Foundation's global work, and explained that the interview, as well as a private lunch he and Scaife had had with Clinton, which Ruddy says was orchestrated by Ed Koch, were due to his shared view, with Scaife that Clinton was doing important work representing the U.S. globally while America was the target of criticism. He also said that he and Scaife had never suggested Clinton was involved in Foster's death, nor had they spread allegations about Clinton's sex scandals, although their work may have encouraged others.
Despite his political opposition to Clinton, the two men forged a friendship after Clinton left office. They became so close that Clinton spoke at a private memorial service for Scaife on August 2, 2014.
Political donations
According to campaignmoney.com, from 1999 through 2006, Scaife, under the name "R. Scaife", made ten contributions of over $200 to political campaigns, for a total of $19,000. Under the name "R.M. Scaife", he made four donations totaling $22,000. Under the name "Richard Scaife", he made 23 donations over this period which totaled $142,904. Besides donations to the Republican National Committee and various political campaigns such as Santorum 2000 and the Santorum Victory Committee for Rick Santorum, he has also supported political action committees such as the Pro-Growth Action Team, the Free Congress PAC (formerly: Committee For the Survival Of a Free Congress), and the Club for Growth Inc. PAC. Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah. He was named to the PoliticsPA list of "Pennsylvania's Top Political Activists".
Philanthropy
Scaife gave away an estimated $1 billion plus adjusted for inflation from his family fortune on philanthropy. He estimated that $620 million of this was "aimed at influencing American public affairs". The Washington Post called him "the leading financial supporter of the movement that reshaped American politics in the last quarter of the 20th century." At the same time, according to journalist Jane Mayer, he gave almost no interviews or speeches on his motives and aims", and "rarely spoke with those who ran the institutions he funded".
Management of the Scaife family foundations
When Scaife refocused his political giving away from individuals and toward anti-communist research groups, legal defense funds, and publications, the first among these was the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
Through contacts made at Hoover and elsewhere, Scaife became a major, early supporter of The Heritage Foundation, which has since become one of Washington's most influential conservative public policy research institutes. He served as vice-chairman of the Heritage Foundation board of trustees.[34]
Later, he supported such varied conservative and libertarian organizations as:
American Enterprise Institute
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues and dissent on anthropogenic global warming
Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives, a Harrisburg-based libertarian think tank
Federalist Society
Foundation for Economic Education
Free Congress Foundation (headed by Jim Gilmore)
Freedom House
GOPAC (headed by Newt Gingrich)
Independent Women's Forum
Intercollegiate Studies Institute (which operates the Collegiate Network)
Judicial Watch
Landmark Legal Foundation
The Media Institute
Media Research Center (headed by Brent Bozell)
Pacific Legal Foundation
Reason Foundation
By 1998, his foundations were listed among donors to over 100 such groups, to which he had disbursed some $340 million by 2002.
Pepperdine University
Scaife also endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was named the first dean of this school. Pepperdine has denied any connection between Scaife and the selection of Starr. Starr accepted the post in 1996, but in the ensuing controversy, he gave up the appointment in 1998 before ever having started at Pepperdine. After the investigation, Starr was appointed to head Pepperdine's law school in 2004, and became president of Baylor University in 2010.
Other philanthropic support
Scaife was identified with his contributions to conservative and libertarian causes. The Washington Post in 1999 dubbed him "funding father of the Right."
However, Scaife supported certain policy research groups which are not explicitly conservative, such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), at the University of Pennsylvania, among others. He was also a major donor to abortion rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood, giving "millions" to the organization, although most of the donations ended in the 1970s, according to The Washington Post.[26]
In the late 1990s, during the height of the Clinton scandals, Scaife nevertheless continued to provide more than $1 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the prime benefactor of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). His donations to restore and beautify the White House led to an invitation by Hillary Clinton for a black-tie celebration. She warmly received him and posed for a photograph on the same day her husband's sex scandal hit the press. Scaife told the New York Post that he appreciated Mrs. Clinton's invitation. "I'm honored", he said, "Lord knows, it's more than I got from [the first] George Bush".
Scaife also supported non-political groups. He was a key benefactor of a number of Pittsburgh-based arts organizations: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Sarah Scaife Galleries at the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh art museum, the Brandywine Conservancy, the Phipps Conservatory, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh. He and his foundations contributed to Sarah Scaife's favorite causes: population control (e.g. Planned Parenthood), environmental conservation, and hospitals; Jonas Salk developed his polio vaccine in a Sarah Scaife funded laboratory. He also supported a variety of educational institutions, notably the University of Chicago, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester, Smith College, Bowling Green State University, and his prep school, Deerfield Academy.
Scaife's first marriage was to Frances L. Gilmore (born December 2, 1934). The couple had two children, Jennie K. Scaife (born July 8, 1963; died November 29, 2018), and David N. Scaife (born February 5, 1966). The couple subsequently divorced.
In June 1991, he married his longtime companion Margaret "Ritchie" Battle (born February 15, 1947), who had made the couple active in the social and cultural life of Pittsburgh. The couple subsequently separated, and, on December 27, 2005, the Pittsburgh Police responded to a call placed by Richard Scaife reporting trespassing at Scaife's residence in the prestigious Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. They arrived to find his estranged wife, pounding on doors and peeking in windows of the couple's mansion. Mrs. Scaife refused to leave the property, and was arrested and charged with defiant trespass.
On April 8, 2006, the Tribune-Review published an article describing a fight between Scaife's estranged wife and three of his servants over a dog that Scaife told the New York Daily News his wife had given him. Both newspapers reported that Scaife's servants went to the hospital for scrapes and bruises after the fracas. Scaife later hung a sign on his lawn: "Wife and dog missing – reward for dog". Three days later, on April 11, Scaife confided to a gossip columnist that he and Margaret Scaife planned to divorce and that their marriage began without a prenuptial agreement. The New York Daily News column estimated his vulnerable assets at half of $1.2 billion.
In September 2007, the Post-Gazette and reporter Dennis Roddy found that the Scaife divorce papers, which had been under seal, were available to the public on the Web site of the Allegheny County Prothonotary's office. The Post-Gazette made the divorce papers available in full on its site. The papers include a full list of the possessions Margaret Scaife alleged her husband had taken and was keeping from her.
He was named to the PoliticsPA list of "Sy Snyder's Power 50" list of influential individuals in Pennsylvania politics in 2002 and 2003.
On May 18, 2014, he announced that his doctors had diagnosed him with an untreatable form of cancer as part of an introspective column in the Tribune-Review.
Steve Kangas incident
On February 8, 1999, former military intelligence specialist and progressive writer Steve Kangas committed suicide less than 60 feet (18 m) from Scaife's office door inside One Oxford Centre in Pittsburgh. He had been an outspoken critic of Scaife and believed that Scaife-funded initiatives posed a danger to the nation. Scaife hired Rex Armistead and a reporter from the Tribune-Review to investigate whether or not Kangas had been out to kill Scaife.
Scaife family mausoleum (1914), Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, burial place of Richard Mellon Scaife
Scaife died after a battle with cancer on the morning of July 4, 2014 at his home, one day after his 82nd birthday. He also owned homes in Pebble Beach, California; Nantucket, Massachusetts; and Ligonier, Pennsylvania.
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Edward Hoagland
Edward Hoagland (born December 21, 1932) is an American author best known for his nature and travel writing.
Edward Hoagland
Born December 21, 1932 (age 92)
New York, New York
Occupation
essayist, novelist
Nationality
American
Genre
nature, travel writing, literature
Hoagland was born in New York, New York and attended Harvard University. He joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the summers of 1951 and 1952. He helped to tend the big cats and later sold a novel about this experience, Cat Man (1955), before graduating from Harvard in 1954. After serving two years in the Army, he published The Circle Home (1960), a novel about boxing, before going on the first of nine trips to Alaska and British Columbia.
During the 1970s, he made the first two of his five trips to Africa. After receiving two Guggenheim Fellowships, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. He has taught at The New School, Rutgers, Sarah Lawrence, CUNY, the University of Iowa, U.C. Davis, Columbia University, Beloit College, and Brown University. In 2005, Hoagland retired from a teaching position at Bennington College in Vermont. Since 1968, he has focused most of his energies on Montaigne-type essays.
According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography,
Hoagland's love of solitude and silent observation of wildlife rather than social conversation may have resulted from a severe stammer that still persists. This stammer has, according to Hoagland himself, influenced how he writes: "Words are spoken at considerable cost to me, so a great value is placed on each one. That has had some effect on me as a writer. As a child, since I couldn't talk to people, I became close to animals. I became an observer, and in all my books, even the novels, witnessing things is what counts." His reluctance to speak may account for his desire to write—and be read—and for the sensitive visual, tactile, and olfactory images in his writings.
Since his retirement, he has spent his summers in Barton, Vermont at a place he has owned since 1969, and his winters in Martha's Vineyard.
His non-fiction has been widely praised by writers such as John Updike, who called him "the best essayist of my generation."
Books
Cat Man, Houghton Mifflin, 1956; NAL, 1958; Ballantine, 1973; Arbor House, 1984; Lyons Press, 2003
The Circle Home, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960; Avon, 1977; Lyons Press, 2003
The Peacock's Tail, McGraw-Hill, 1965
Notes from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia, Random House, 1969; Ballantine, 1972; North Point Press, 1982; Sierra Club Books, 1995; Modern Library, 2002
The Courage of Turtles, Random House, 1971; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993
Walking the Dead Diamond River, Random House, 1973; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993
The Moose on the Wall, Barrie & Jenkins, 1974
Red Wolves and Black Bears, Random House, 1976; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995
African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan, Random House, 1979; Penguin, 1981; Lyons & Burford, 1995
The Edward Hoagland Reader, Random House, 1979; Vintage, 1981
The Tugman's Passage, Random House, 1982; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995
City Tales, Capra Press, 1986
Seven Rivers West, Simon & Schuster, 1986; Penguin, 1987; Lyons Press, 2003
Heart's Desire, Simon & Schuster, 1988; Collins Harville, 1990; Touchstone, 1991
The Final Fate of the Alligators, Capra Press, 1992
Balancing Acts, Simon & Schuster, 1992, Touchstone, 1993; Lyons Press, 1999
Tigers & Ice, Lyons Press, 1999
Compass Points, Pantheon, 2001; Vintage, 2002
Hoagland on Nature, Lyons Press, 2003
Early in the Season, Douglas & McIntyre, 2008
Sex and the River Styx, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011
Alaskan Travels, Arcade Publishing, 2012
Children Are Diamonds, Arcade Publishing, 2013
Short stories
"Cowboys," The Noble Savage, No. 1, February 1960
"The Last Irish Fighter," Esquire, August 1960
"The Witness," The Paris Review, Summer-Fall 1967
"The Colonel's Power," New American Review, No. 2, January 1968
"Kwan's Coney Island," New American Review, No. 5, January 1969
"A Fable of Mammas," Transatlantic Review, No. 32, Summer 1969
"The Final Fate of the Alligators," The New Yorker, October 18, 1969
"Seven Rivers West," Esquire, July 1986
"The Mind's Eye," The Nature of Nature, (ed. Wm. Shore), Harcourt, 1994
"The Devil's Tub," Yale Review, Autumn, 2005
"Triage Along the Nile," Conjunctions, Fall 2008
"In Africa," New Letters, vol. 74, Fall 2008
Essays
"The Big Cats," Esquire, April 1961
"The Draft Card Gesture," Commentary, February 1968
"Notes from the Century Before," The Paris Review, Winter 1968
"On Not Being a Jew," Commentary, April 1968
"The Threshold and the Jolt of Pain," The Village Voice, October 17, 1968
"The Courage of Turtles," The Village Voice, December 12, 1968
"The Elephant Trainer and the Man on Stilts," The Village Voice, April 17, 1969
"Why this Extra Violence," The Village Voice, May 8, 1969
"Knights and Squires: For Love of the Tugs," The Village Voice, May 29, 1969
"The Problem of the Golden Rule," Commentary, August 1969
"Blitzes and Holding Actions," The Village Voice, October 16, 1969
"Books, Movies, the News," Book World, November 9, 1969
"Home is Two Places," Commentary, February 1970
"The Circus in 1970," The Village Voice, April 9, 1970
"The Moose on the Wall," New American Review, No. 9, April 1970
"Americana by the Acre," Harper's, October 1970
"Meatcutters Are a Funny Bunch," The Village Voice, December 17, 1970
"The Portland Freight Run," The Atlantic, February 1971
"The War in the Woods," Harper's, February 1971
"Splendid, with Trumpets," The Village Voice, April 8, 1971
"Two Clowns," Life, April 25, 1971
"The Assassination Impulse," The Village Voice, May 27, 1971
"Of Cows and Cambodia," The Atlantic, July 1971
"The Soul of the Tiger," Esquire, July 1971
"Hailing the Elusory Mountain Lion," The New Yorker, August 7, 1971
"Jane Street's Samurai," The Village Voice, November 25, 1971
"Nobody Writes Stories about Unicorns," The Village Voice, December 16, 1971
"Passions and Tensions," The Village Voice, February 2, 1972
"On the Question of Dogs," The Village Voice, March 30, 1972
"City Rat," Audience, March–April 1972
"Women Aflame," The Village Voice, April 27, 1972
"Marriage, Fame, Power, Success," The Village Voice, May 18, 1972
"In the Toils of the Law," The Atlantic, June 1972
"Looking for Wilderness," The Atlantic, August 1972
"Thoughts on Returning to the Mountain..." The Village Voice, November, 1972
"Heart's Desire," Audience, November–December 1972
"Howling Back at the Wolves," Saturday Review, December 1972
"Wall Maps and Woodpeckers," The Village Voice, January 25, 1973
"Fred King on the Allagash," Audience, January–February 1973
"Mountain Towers," The Village Voice, February 15, 1973
"At Pinkham Notch," The Village Voice, March 15, 1973
"Wildlands in Vermont," The Village Voice, March 22, 1973
"In a Lair with a Bear," Sports Illustrated, March 26, 1973
"Tricks, Innocence, Pathos, Perfection," The Village Voice, May 10, 1973
"The Young Must Do the Healing," New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1973
"Other Lives," Harper's, July 1973
"A Run of Bad Luck," Newsweek, July 30, 1973
"Writing Wild," New York Times Book Review, September 23, 1973
"That Gorgeous Great Novelist," The Village Voice, November 15, 1973
"But Where Is Home," New York Times Book Review, December 23, 1973
"A Mountain with a Wolf on It," Sports Illustrated, January 14, 1974
"Where Have All the Heroes Gone," New York Times Magazine, March 10, 1974
"Where the Action Is," New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1974
"Nine Home Truths about Writing," The Village Voice, January 20, 1975
"The Tug of Life at the End of the Leash," Harper's, February 1975
"Big Frog, Very Small Pond," Sports Illustrated, March 3, 1975
"The Survival of the Newt," New York Times Magazine, July 27, 1975
"Apocalypse Enough," Not Man Apart, July 1975
"A Paradox among Us," Harper's, January 1976
"Southern Mansions," Travel & Leisure, February 1976
"What I Think, What I Am," New York Times Book Review, June 27, 1976
"Cairo Observed," Harper's, June 1976
"At Large in East Africa," Harper's, August 1976
"The Fragile Writer," New York Times Book Review, December 12, 1976
"The Ridge-Slope Fox and the Knife-Thrower," Harper's, January 1977
"Do Writers Stay Home," New York Times Book Review, May 22, 1977
"Without American Express," New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1978
"Into Eritrea: Africa's Red Sea War," Harper's, July 1978
"Unsilent Spring," The Nation, May 26, 1979
"Gabriel, Who Wanted to Know," The New England Review, Summer 1979
"Tugs," Harper's, December 1979
"Johnny Appleseed," American Heritage, December–January 1979
"Being Between Books," New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1979
"December Song," The Nation, December 6, 1980
"America Was Promises (Still)," The Nation, February 21, 1981
"Making of a Writer," New York Times Book Review, October 4, 1981
"Gods, Masks, and Horses," Vanity Fair, July 1983
"Anchorage," Vanity Fair, October 1983
"Up the Black to Chalkyitsik," House and Garden, June 1984
"Hail the Anhinga," The Nation, June 9, 1984
"Memories of Circuses Past," The Nation, March 9, 1985
"In Okefenokee," National Geographic Traveler, Spring 1985
"Nectar Feeding," The Nation, July 20, 1985
"In Praise of John Muir," Antaeus, Autumn 1986
"Three Trains Across Canada," Travel & Leisure, March 1987
"Up with Spring," The Nation, June 6, 1987
"Treasured Places," Life, July 1987
"Summer Skunks," The Nation, August 29, 1987
"Christmases Past," The Nation, December 26, 1987
"Heaven and Nature," Harper's, March 1988
"Arabia Felix," Interview magazine, May 1988
"The Indispensable Thoreau," American Heritage, July 1988
"Learning to Eat Soup," Antaeus, Autumn 1988
"The Hunger in Manhattan Life," Harper's, June 1989
"Jubilant Spring," The Nation, June 19, 1989
"A World Worth Saving," Life, October 1989
"O Wyoming," Outside, October 1989
"Tolstoyan Tide," The Nation, May 14, 1990
"Shh, Our Writers Are Sleeping," Esquire, July 1990
"On Getting One's Footing" (reprinted from "Anxious Dreams", Manchester Guardian, January 20), Harper's, August 1990
"Roadless Regions," Literary Outtakes, September 1990
"Passing Views," Harper's, January 1991
"Good Trips, Bad Trips," Outside, April 1991
"The Best Idea," Life, May 1991
"Spring Medley," The Nation, June 10, 1991
"Holy Fools," The Nation, September 16, 1991
"Everybody Comes to Belize," Outside, February 1992
"Meat for the Old Man," Outside, May 1992
"Christmas Observed," New York Times Magazine, December 20, 1992
"To the Point," Harper's, March 1993
"Skin and Bones," The Nation, May 3, 1993
"The Unknown Thoreau," The Nation, June 7, 1993
"Nature's Seesaw," Vermont, May 1994 (also in Land's End Catalogue, September 1993)
"All This Good World," Manoa, June 1994
"Strange Perfume," Esquire, June 1994
"The View from 61," New York Times Magazine, November 27, 1994
"Brightness Visible," Harper's, January 1995
"Surge Time at the Bottom of the Earth," Outside, March 1995
"Scenes from a Forty-Year War," The Nation, April 10, 1995
"Like a Saul Bellow Character," Salmagundi, Spring 1995
"Stepping Back," New York Times Magazine, November 12, 1995
"Books that Need Authors," The Nation, November 13, 1995
"The Daring Art of Rockwell Kent," Civilization, January 1996
"Dying Argots," Harper's, January 1996
"Running Mates," Hungry Mind Review, November 1996 (also Spring 1999)
"Generational Pioneer," New York Times Magazine, December 8, 1996
"A Last Look Around," Civilization, February 1997
"The Peaceable Kingdom," Preservation, March 1997 (also in Vermont, June 1999)
"Wild Things," Granta, Spring 1997
"Samos, Reflections on Love, and Love Lost, On a Greek Island," Islands, June 1997
"Henry James and Porky Pig," The Nation, June 30, 1997
"The Sage of Selborne," The Yale Review, July 1997
"Spring Comes to the Kingdom," Vermont Woodlands, Spring 1998
"I Can See," Granta, Summer 1998
"India," River City, Summer 1998
"Vermont Journal," American Scholar, Summer 1998
"Vermont: Suite of Seasons," National Geographic, September 1998
"Lost Between Burma and Tibet," Outside, October 1998
Craft and Obsession: An Interview with Edward Hoagland," The Hungry Mind Review, Spring 1999
"On the Lure of Water," Sierra, May 1999
"Writers Afoot," American Scholar, Summer 1999
"Earth's Eye," Northern Woodlands, Autumn 1999
"That Sense of Falling," Preservation, October 1999
"Writers Afoot," Harper's, October 1999
"Calliope Times," The New Yorker, May 22, 2000
"Natural Excursions," Orion, Summer 2000
"Fire," American Scholar, Autumn 2000
"Natural Light," Harper's, October 2000
"Vermont's Civil Union," Washington Post, late October 2000
"Secrets of the Stutter," U.S. News & World Report, April 2, 2001
"Smirko, Smirko, Smirko!" Yankee, June 2001
"Two Kinds of People," Worth, November 2001
"Circus Music," Harper's, February 2002
"Ansel Adams at 100," Aperture, Spring 2002
"John Muir's Alaskan Rhapsody," American Scholar, Spring 2002
"Blind Faith," Food and Wine, April 2002
"1776 and All That," The Nation, July 22, 2002
"Diaries," The Paris Review, Summer 2002
"The Circus of Dr. Lao," Post Road, Fall 2002
"Not Even the Giant Squid," Harper's, November 2002
"Sex and the River Styx," Harper's, January 2003
"The American Dissident," Harper's, August 2003
"Immersion Teaching," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 2004
"Small Silences," Harper's, July 2004
"Journals," American Scholar, Autumn 2004
"The Glue Is Gone," American Scholar, Winter 2005
"Miles from Nowhere," American Scholar, Summer 2006
"Endgame: Meditations on a Diminishing World," Harper's, June 2007
"Children Are Diamonds," Portland, Fall 2007
"The Broken Balance," The American Scholar, Spring 2008
"A Country for Old Men," The American Scholar, Winter 2009
"Curtain Calls," Harper's, March 2009
"China's Mystic Waters," National Geographic, March 2009[4]
"Journals '04, '05," The Seattle Review, Fall 2009
"Barley and Yaks," Orion, November 2009
"Last Call – Old Age and the End of Nature," Harper's, May 2010
"Spaced Out in the City," American Scholar, Summer 2010
"When I Was Blind," Portland Magazine, Summer 2011
"The Gravity of Falling," The American Scholar, Winter 2012
"The Top of the Continent," Portland Magazine, Winter 2012
"On Friendship," The American Scholar, Winter 2013
"Pity Earth's Creatures," The New York Times, March 23, 2013
Other essays
Commencing from March 12, 1979, fifty-plus unsigned editorials in The New York Times: "The Price of Fur," "In the Spring," "Hang-ups," "Mountain House," etc., to 1989
Pequod, Winter 1986
New England Monthly, May 1987
Yankee Homes, September 1989
Manchester Guardian, January 20, 1990; August 12, 1990; March 31, 1991
Anchorage Daily News, June 28, 1992
Vermont, June 1994
The New York Times, January 11, 1986; June 15, 1991; October 5, 1993; May 13, 1995
Rolling Stone, May 28, 1998
Manoa, June 1999
Portland Magazine (Oregon), Summer 1996; Winter 1996; Winter 1997; Spring 2002
The Vineyard Gazette, November 9, 2012
Book reviews
In The New York Times Book Review, May 9, 1971; June 13, 1971; February 6, 1972; October 7, 1973; October 21, 1973; December 2, 1973; April 14, 1974; May 19, 1974; "City Walking," June 1, 1975; June 22, 1975; November 9, 1975; December 7, 1975; April 11, 1976; April 18, 1976; May 9, 1976; August 15, 1976; September 5, 1976; November 14, 1976; January 9, 1977; June 19, 1977; August 14, 1977; September 11, 1977; November 27, 1977; December 11, 1977; November 19, 1978; November 26, 1978; January 21, 1979; February 4, 1979; June 24, 1979; July 22, 1979; March 23, 1980; March 30, 1980; June 8, 1980; August 17, 1980; March 15, 1981; November 8, 1981; June 6, 1982; August 29, 1982; October 17, 1982; November 21, 1982; June 12, 1983; January 22, 1984; October, 1984; February 16, 1986; July 19, 1987; September 11, 1988; January 8, 1989; May 7, 1989; March 18, 1990; November 25, 1990; July 2, 2000
In The Boston Herald, December 20, 1970
In The Village Voice, December 30, 1971; October 24, 1974; October 1982
In The Chicago Daily News, December 1, 1974
In Life, October 14, 1971; April 21, 1972; October 27, 1972
In Harper's Book Letter, May 12, 1975
In Harper's, July 1977; May 1985; January 1986; February 1989
In Saturday Review, April 28, 1979, December 1980
In New York magazine, May 28, 1979
In The New Republic, October 20, 1979; March 1, 1980
In Washington Post Book World, April 12, 1970; June 6, 1970; October 30, 1972; June 15, 1980; October 11, 1981; August 2, 1987
In Inside Sports, November 1980
In Science Digest, October 1981
In Chicago Tribune, November 6, 1988
In Wigwag, October–November–December 1989
In USA Today, October 23, 1992; November 13, 1992; January 21, 1994
In Boston Globe, November 19, 1995; April 19, 1997
In Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1996
In Civilization, November 1994; March 1995; July 1995; October 1997
In Onearth, October 2004
"Here He Is, On the Prowl," in "William James in His Time and Ours," Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume 20, Number 2
Other work
General editor of the Penguin Nature Library; later called the Penguin Nature Classics series: thirty volumes in all, 1985 on: Bartram, Beston, Austin, Bates, Catlin, Audubon, Thoreau, Muir, Powell, Warner, White, Seton, Lewis and Clark, Prishvin, King, etc., introduced by Stegner, Updike, Theroux, Dickey, Barth, Turner, Abbey, McKibben, Shoumatoff, Ehrlich, Nelson, Berry, Matthiessen, et al.
Introductions written for:
The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G. Finney, Vintage, 1983
The Mountains of California, by John Muir, Penguin, 1985
The Maine Woods, by Henry David Thoreau, Penguin, 1988
Vanishing Arctic, by T. M. Watkins, Aperture Books, 1988
The Pushcart Prize XVI, Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson, 1991
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, Vintage, 1991
Steep Trails, by John Muir, Sierra Club Books, 1994
Land of Rivers, by Peter Mancall, Cornell University Press, 1996
N by E, by Rockwell Kent, Wesleyan University Press, 1996
The Natural History of Selborne, by Gilbert White, Penguin, 1997
The Best American Essays 1999, edited by Edward Hoagland, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Elevating Ourselves, by Henry David Thoreau, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Our Like Will Not Be There Again, by Lawrence Hillman, Ruminator Books, 2001
The Shameless Diary of an Explorer, by Robert Dunn, Modern Library, 2001
Shooting Blind, by Visually Impaired Collective, Aperture Books, 2002
Step Right This Way, by Edward J. Kelty, Barnes & Noble Books, 2002
Travels in Alaska, by John Muir, Modern Library, 2002
Interview, Agni 62, Fall 2005
Contributor to large-format books:
Our World's Heritage, National Geographic Society, 1987
Paths Less Traveled, Atheneum, 1988
Favorite Places, a Travel & Leisure Book, 1989
Heart of a Nation, National Geographic Society, 2000
Other:
In numerous anthologies.
Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, 1954; Longview Foundation Award, 1961; Prix de Rome, 1964; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965; New York State Arts Council grant, 1972; Brandeis University Citation in Literature, 1972; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1975; Harold Vursell Award of American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1981; National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1982; Lannan Foundation Award, 1993.
Nominated for National Book Award, 1974; National Book Critics Circle Award, 1980; American Book Award, 1982; New York Public Library Literary Lion, 1988 and 1996; National Magazine Award, 1989; Boston Public Library Literary Light, 1995. Elected to American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1982.
Has juried competitions for the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation, New York State Arts Council
Virginia Commission for the Arts, Oregon State Arts Council, Breadloaf Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters, etc.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2011
John Burroughs Medal, 2012
Deerfield Academy
Deerfield Academy (often called Deerfield or DA) is an independent college-preparatory boarding and day school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States.
Deerfield Academy
Deerfield, Massachusetts 01342
Former name
Deerfield Academy and Dickinson High School (1876-1923)
Independent, boarding and day school
Motto Be Worthy of Your Heritage
Religious affiliation(s)
Nonsectarian
Established 1797
Head of school John Austin
Faculty Approx. 150
Grades 9–12 Gender
Co-educational
Enrollment Approx. 650
Campus size 330 acres (130 ha)
Campus type Rural
Color(s) Hunter green and white
Athletics conference
Six Schools League
NEPSAC
Team name
Big Green
Newspaper The Deerfield Scroll
Yearbook The Pocumtuck
Endowment $791 million (June 2022)
Tuition
$68,230 (boarding)
$48,950 (day)
Affiliations
Eight Schools Association
Ten Schools Admissions Organization
Deerfield has approximately 650 students and 150 faculty. Its acceptance rate was 13% for the 2023–24 school year, and its students come from 32 states and 42 countries. 89% of its students live on campus, 17% of its students are international, and 44% identify as students of color. 39% of its students are on financial aid.
Deerfield is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admissions Organization, and the Six Schools League.
Deerfield Academy was founded in 1797 when Massachusetts governor Samuel Adams granted a charter to found a school "for the promotion of Piety, Religion & Morality, & for the Education of Youth in the liberal Arts & Sciences, & all other useful Learning." Having opened its doors to students in 1799, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States.
The academy was established in the remote town of Deerfield, at the time "the principal [European] settlement on the western frontier." A Mr. John Williams organized a coalition of local grandees, including future U.S. congressmen Ebenezer Mattoon and Samuel Taggart, to raise $1,300 to build a school house and another $1,400 for an endowment. From the start, Deerfield educated both boys and girls.
Like many early "boarding" academies in New England, Deerfield did not have its own dormitories when it opened, and out-of-town students were required to rent rooms from local families. Deerfield did not open its first dormitory for another ten years. Even so, the newly opened academy was able to attract many students from the surrounding area; of the school's first 269 students, only 68 were from the town of Deerfield. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Deerfield had over 100 students. Early Deerfield graduates occupied many congressional and gubernatorial seats in New England.
Deerfield became a semi-public school in 1859, after the Massachusetts legislature ordered the town of Deerfield to establish a free public high school. In 1876, the academy was reincorporated as the Deerfield Academy and Dickinson High School, after local resident Esther Dickinson left the town $50,000 to build a new academic building (since demolished) and town library. As late as the 1920s, the academy was still relying on tax revenue from the town. Despite the town's financial support, the academy was in deep financial trouble by the end of the 19th century. Industrialization had depopulated large portions of western Massachusetts, depriving the academy of many potential students. From 1880 to 1900, the population of the town of Deerfield nearly halved, falling from 3,543 to 1,969. When headmaster Frank Boyden arrived in 1902, there were only fourteen students left, and the boarding department had already shut down.
Reinvention as a college-preparatory school
In 1902, Deerfield hired the 22-year-old Frank Boyden as its new headmaster. Its financial position was so precarious that Boyden was the only person willing to apply for the job. Boyden revitalized the academy by transforming it into a private, boys-only college-preparatory boarding school that drew its students not from the surrounding area but the entire country.
Boyden gradually rebuilt the academy's enrollment, invested in teacher salaries,[17] and developed strong relationships with college administrators. (According to one story, a strong recommendation from Boyden could get a student into Princeton University even if Princeton had already decided to reject him.[18]) He restored Deerfield's boarding department in 1916, hoping to attract wealthy families whose tuition payments could rescue the school's financial situation.[19] To attract boarders to what was essentially a brand-new school, Boyden hired advertising executive Bruce Barton to pitch Deerfield to prospective parents as "the cradle ... of the New England conscience,"[20] and popularized "[t]he notion of the Deerfield Boy ... intelligent, but more important[ly], well-rounded, ... plac[ing] a high value on ethics, morals and sportsmanship."[21] By 1923, Deerfield had 140 students, including 80 boarders.
A capable fundraiser, Boyden saved Deerfield a second time in 1923, when the town exiled Deerfield from the public school system in favor of the brand-new Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield. When Deerfield was re-privatized, the headmasters of Exeter, Taft, and Andover raised $1.5 million from their own alumni to save Deerfield from extinction.[23] They also boosted Deerfield's enrollment by referring students that they had expelled to Boyden, who had reportedly established a reputation for rehabilitating such students.[24] (Boyden may have welcomed the change, because "Deerfield's rising population of immigrant Polish farmers" conflicted with his desire "to maintain the school as a Yankee institution"; he told a colleague that Deerfield needed a boarding department "to help settle the Polish problem." However, Exeter principal Lewis Perry—a personal friend of Boyden's—pushed back against the suggestion that Boyden was uninterested in educating Poles, writing that Boyden had "put a good many Polish boys and girls" through Deerfield.
As Deerfield grew more prominent, it moved away from its public-school roots. Academic James McLachlan said that Boyden built "an essentially new and different institution [] on a moribund foundation.” In Boyden's early years, Deerfield "w[as] comparatively inexpensive, drew [its] students from a broader social spectrum, and imposed a less Victorian regimen" than Episcopalian church schools like St. Paul's, Groton, and Kent. By 1928, 30 out of Deerfield's 185 students were on scholarship, and as a further democratizing measure, the scholarship students' identities were kept secret. However, the academy's rising reputation also attracted the attention of major donors from around the country, including Nelson Rockefeller and John Gideon Searle, who sent their children to Deerfield.[30] By 1940, Deerfield was charging higher tuition than even St. Paul's and Groton, and as many as 75% of Deerfield students had attended private middle schools. (The latter fact displeased Boyden, and by the 1960s the academy boasted that 75% of its incoming students had attended a public school. Deerfield also discontinued coeducation in 1948, after educating girls for over 150 years.
Boyden retired in 1968. When he died in 1972, the New York Times wrote that he had taken over "a dying village institution and made it a notable preparatory school," and that he was "the best known American headmaster of his times."[16]
Modern era
David M. Pynchon was appointed headmaster after Boyden, serving from 1968 to 1979. He was succeeded by Robert Kaufmann, who readmitted girls to Deerfield in 1989 after a 41-year absence. At the time, Deerfield was renowned as "the last of the big New England all-male prep schools" (most of its peer schools began admitting girls in the 1960s and early 1970s), and the all-male student body protested the decision when it was announced.
Eric Widmer '57 served as headmaster from 1994 to 2006. He stepped down in June 2006 to found King's Academy in Madaba, Jordan, a school backed by Deerfield alumnus King Abdullah II of Jordan, and partially inspired by the King's years at Deerfield in the 1980s. Deerfield then tapped Andover dean Margarita Curtis as its first female Head of School. ADuring her thirteen years at Deerfield, the endowment increased by $250 million and the academy spent $140 million on new buildings and renovations. The current head of school is John Austin, the former head of school at King's Academy.
The academy has maintained its strong reputation in the 21st century. It has been described as an "elite boarding school" by the New York Times, "one of the nation's ... most elite boarding schools" by the Boston Globe, and "an elite private school" by the Associated Press.
Deerfield follows a trimester system, in which the school year is divided into three academic grading periods. Deerfield students take a full liberal arts curriculum, including English, history, foreign language, mathematics, laboratory science, visual and performing arts, and philosophy and religion. However, required courses are kept at a minimum to allow students to take more courses in the subjects that interest them most.
Most courses last the entire year, but some can last for one to two terms. The required course load is five graded courses per term, but students may petition the Academic Dean to take a sixth graded course if desired. There are no Saturday classes, and classes are held from Monday to Friday, typically from 8:30 am to 2:55 pm. On Wednesdays, classes end at 12:45 pm to accommodate athletic events, as well as to provide more time for clubs and community service.
Deerfield does not rank students. Academic work is graded on a scale where the minimum passing grade is 60 and the median grades are between 85 and 90. A trimester average of 90.0 or above garners Honors distinction, whereas a trimester average of 93.0 or above garners High Honors distinction.
Test scores
The Class of 2023's average combined SAT score was 1382 and its average combined ACT score was 31. Although Deerfield no longer offers Advanced Placement courses except in math and the arts, in the 2022–23 school year, students took 680 AP exams (for reference, there were 185 juniors and 162 seniors at Deerfield that year) and passed 93% of them.
The Arms Building houses the English department. It was designed by Charles Platt in 1933 and donated by Jennie Maria Arms Sheldon.
The Boyden Library is a three-story library that originally opened in 1968 and was named in honor of former headmaster Frank L. Boyden and his wife Helen Childs Boyden. The library was renovated in 2015. After renovations, the Boyden Library now houses the College Advising Office, as well as the Academic Dean's Office. The library also houses the Center for Service and Global Citizenship (CSGC). It also contains an open Innovation Lab, which allows students to construct objects of their own design.
The Hess Center for the Arts was renovated in 2014 and contains facilities for the visual and performing arts. The Hess Center contains the Hess Auditorium (often called the "Large Aud"), where weekly School Meetings are held. There are two galleries, the von Auersperg Gallery and the Hilson Gallery, which both exhibit student, faculty, and outside artwork. The orchestral and choral groups perform every trimester in the Elizabeth Wachsman Concert Hall. The Reid Black Box Theater is home to the theater program's productions.
The Kendall Classroom Building houses the Language Department. It contains a language lab and a 160-seat auditorium (often called the "Small Aud") and is where the school newspaper and yearbook are written.
The Koch Center houses the Math Department, Science Department, and Computer Science Department, as well as the Information Technology Services and Communications offices. The Koch Center contains a planetarium and the Garonzik Auditorium, which contains 225 seats. The Koch center also includes an astronomy viewing terrace and the Louis Cafe.
The Main School Building was completed in 1931 and initially served as the classroom building for the entire school. The Main School Building houses the Admission and Financial Aid Office, and prospective students wait in the Caswell Library. After renovations in the 1980s, the building houses the History Department, Philosophy & Religion Department, and administrative offices.
The Dining Hall is where Deerfield hosts its traditional sit-down meals.
The 3-Floor D.S. Chen Health Center was opened in 2019 and is staffed 24/7.
Outdoor facilities
Fair Family Field is a turf field.
Headmaster's Field is a baseball field.
Jamie Kapteyn Field
Jim Smith Field is used by the varsity football team in the fall and boys varsity lacrosse team in the spring.
Lower Level & South Division Field comprise 90 acres of athletic fields. They are home to boys varsity soccer, JV soccer, and field hockey teams in the fall and JV lacrosse in the spring.
Rowland Family Field is used for varsity field hockey.
There are 21 tennis courts.
The track is an eight-lane 10mm full pour track surface with two synthetic turf fields.
The David H. Koch Natatorium holds an eight-lane pool and separate diving well.
The Dewey Squash Courts house 10 international squash courts
The East & West Gyms house 3 basketball courts and are used by the varsity and JV volleyball teams in the fall and JV basketball teams in the winter.
The Fitness Center contains cardiovascular and weight machines, as well as free weights.
The Ice Rink is used by the varsity and JV hockey teams.
The Kravis Room is used for wrestling.