On School House Pond

A TRIBUTE TO MAIA BROGAN 1924-2018

By Lynn Crevling ’72 in collaboration with Meg Brogan Adley & Tom Donahue

Maia Brogan was the wind behind his sails, the rudder supporting his direction, a skip in his step, and strength that bolstered him. Francis “Frank” Brogan, the tenth Headmaster of The Storm King School, brought the undeniable presence, wisdom, and support of his wife, Maia, when he arrived on the Mountain in 1966. For eight years, their partnership impacted hundreds of young lives. A quintessential Headmaster’s wife, Maia loved and excelled in her role. Had she been born a generation later, she might have been recognized for her own career accomplishments, but that reflected neither the times nor her inclination.

Maia Anderson was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, on March 31, 1924; the fifth child in a family of three brothers and two sisters. Her father had emigrated from Sweden and her mother was from New Hampshire of Swedish descent. Shortly after Maia’s birth, the Anderson family moved to Hyannis on Cape Cod where her father started a plumbing and heating business–a trade he had learned as an apprentice in Boston. Her father had little formal education, going only to the third grade. He was a self-educated man who proudly served for 24 years on the local Town of Barnstable School Board. Her mother, whose education went only to the eighth grade, was an avid reader, and, along with her husband, valued education. All six of the Anderson children graduated from college. Maia attended the University of New Hampshire, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in Languages just as World War II was breaking out. Because of the war effort, classes were accelerated and she completed her studies in three years and six weeks.

A World War II decoding center in Washington D.C.

Out of college, Maia joined many other young women of the time and moved to Washington, D.C. to support the war effort, working for Army Intelligence as a code reader. The U.S. Army and Navy was recruiting intelligent young women from small towns and elite colleges, and more than 10,000 women served as code breakers while their brothers and boyfriends took up arms. The women cracked codes, relying on a mixture of mathematical expertise, memorization, and occasional leaps of intuition. Their efforts shortened the war and saved countless lives. Maia was the first person to break the code to find out that World War II had ended.

The challenges and importance of this work during the war, with Maia’s intelligence and skill in languages, were significant, yet Maia exemplified the New England Yankee qualities of modesty and understatement, never speaking of her important role in history.

At the end of the war, Maia returned to Cape Cod. Frank Brogan had returned to Cape Cod after the war, too. Frank was the youngest son of an Irish family that owned and operated rooming houses and restaurants on the Cape and Florida. He had dropped out of school and enlisted in the US Marine Corps on the day that

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 at age 17. After his basic training, he was sent to the Pacific Theatre where he served valiantly in three Marine beach landings (for a depiction of what Frank experienced, see the film Saving Private Ryan) including in Guam where his actions resulted in later being awarded the Bronze Star for Bravery. Years later, late one evening while sitting on the back stairway to faculty member Tom Donahue’s apartment in Lowmount, Frank told Tom that he had failed a paper in his English class on Friday, December 5, before his enlisting. His English teacher had told him to rewrite it for Monday. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on Sunday, Frank told Tom he felt "saved" from rewriting the paper as he headed to the Marine Recruiting office. A couple of years later, sitting in the very back of the landing craft jam-packed with Marines on their way to the beach, bombs exploding all around, men hit and screaming, some dying in the surf, he said he asked himself, "Why the hell didn't I just rewrite the damn paper?"

A young Mrs. Brogan

In Hyannis Port after the war, Frank returned to finish high school and graduated at age 21, where he met Maia again. Maia Anderson and Frank Brogan had known each other since childhood. They were born on the same day and the same year, both growing up in Hyannis Port, MA. They married in 1948, and then moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where Frank attended college and Maia worked for the chairman of the English Department. The chairman told Maia that Frank was a very promising student! Frank graduated magna cum laude and went to Harvard for graduate studies. While Frank was in graduate school, Maia again supported them both by working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the Dean of the Liberal Arts College.

Maia’s father had purchased a sizeable piece of land on Cape Cod in Hyannis Port and, after building their home, he divided up the remaining land among his six children. Maia and Frank built a home on the family plot in 1960, a modest cottage on a quiet dirt road overlooking a large pond named Schoolhouse Pond. When Frank was younger, he used to walk by that pond and the land, not knowing that one day he and Maia would marry and build a house on the land that he loved. The cottage became known as The Pond House, and was used as a summer escape and place to return after their travels.

Frank’s first job after leaving Harvard was a position at Punahoa School in Honolulu, HI, where he taught English. He remained there for two years before returning to the mainland and a new position at Montclair High School in New Jersey where he taught English. While at Montclair, they adopted their first son Sean who died of crib death on Christmas Day at Maia’s parents’ homestead on Cape Cod. Months later, they adopted son, Jed, and later, their daughter, Meg.

In 1963, Frank accepted a position as head of the English department at Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, the oldest American school outside the United States. They lived there for three years, traveling extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

In 1966, Frank was selected as the tenth Headmaster of Storm King School. Upon the family’s arrival he wrote, “Mrs. Brogan and I, along with our children Jed, 12, and Meg, 6, are now settled in Spy Rock House. Recent additions to the family are Timothy and Widgeon, nine-month old Springer Spaniels.”

Jed, Maia, Meg, and Frank Brogan with their Springer Spaniels Timothy and Widgeon on the steps of their home at SKS , Spy Rock

As Headmaster’s wife, Maia established the Headmaster’s home, Spy Rock, in a New England-style of elegant simplicity and as a place for entertaining leaders of the community, trustees, alumni, faculty and students. In an interview in 2017, Maia recalled, “Oh, I loved that house…we were just thrilled to be in such a big, beautiful house…and having that dining room with the long table and filling it with people… we started doing that very quickly! I remember the first dinner we gave for Trustees and that long table in that lovely dining room with that beautiful fireplace. Also, the first faculty member that Frank interviewed joined us at that long table for a meal before he was hired. It was Tom Donahue. He was intelligent and also very funny and sometimes naughty. I can see him to this day all dressed up having come up from New York for the interview, and he was so interesting as he started spilling his life to us. Immediately we thought: we’ve got to have this man on the faculty because he knows kids! And most of it took place over dinner at our table at Spy Rock.”

Tom Donahue recently wrote, “For those of us who lived through the Brogan years on the mountain, Maia was a great and powerful presence…Her boundless energy, her relentlessly upbeat demeanor even in the face of some very, very rough times she endured, her endless kindnesses to all the young fools on the faculty (me very much included), made her the indispensable woman, the softener of life's sharpest edges, the dependable, friendly face. At a very personal level, she was the last of the mentoring lions of my youth…I seem to have had the immense good fortune to happen upon a great number of really wonderful people along the way, some of whom came along just when I needed them most. Frank and Maia (I will never think of one without the other) are at the very top of my list. I owe them more than I could EVER have repaid.”

Maia and Frank, always a partnership, steered and navigated The Storm King School in the tumultuous times of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, bridging the timeworn traditions of a boys’ boarding “prep” school in an era of staggering social change largely driven by youth: political and antiwar activism, feminism, the black power movement, recreational drugs, a budding gay rights movement, and more. In 1969, Frank Brogan wrote, “It is a dynamic world these boys go out to this year – more vital, threatening, more questioning, more opinionated… What bothers me is we are asked to choose up sides… we are lined up by polarities…and in a democracy designed to accommodate the rich complexities of differences, we are given to sparse simplicities.”

Maia recalled that they were successful because “Frank loved kids, and he had been an interesting kid himself! He sometimes had trouble in school and sometimes had big successes…One day Frank and I were walking on the street on Hyannis Port on Cape Cod. He had been retired maybe 10 years or so. We met a woman both of us knew– our English teacher in high school! She was very glad to see both of us, but right away she wanted to know about Frank. She said, “Frank, what did you do with yourself?” Frank said, “You’ll be surprised. I was a good teacher, the head of the English department, and a Headmaster.” “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” she said. Then Frank laughed and said “Come on, Mrs. Hearst, you flunked me!” Maia said that the teacher replied, “Frank, you were one of my brightest students. I flunked you because you didn’t do your work.” Frank smiled, “You’re right, I didn’t do my work!”

Scott Cantor ’73, Headmaster Frank Brogan, Roger Altman ’74, Bill Gagan ’73, & Peter Lawrence ’74

During the Brogan era, students’ shoes were often neatly lined up on the steps inside the entrance door of Spy Rock for monthly birthday party dinners. They were noisy gatherings with mountains of homemade pizza and other food, and birthday cake. Maia recalled, “Those dinners were our introductions to the boys at the School. When the students came to the house, they liked to eat, and to have a little bit more. Feeding them was big. Teenage boys, wow!”

Students dining at the Headmaster's table with Maia and Frank Brogan, December 1966

“A couple of years later when we had boys staying on the third floor, they soon discovered the door between the stairs from upstairs to our living space… We became sort of parents to those kids in the attic, which was a very agreeable place, actually. They would often come down and visit or hope for cookies. I always had cookies. The boys would come to us to share their problems, worries, or changes they wanted to see. They were honest and sometimes very apologetic.

I mostly listened, and then fed them cookies. I made thousands of cookies in those first years. I learned a lot of things just because they were relaxed and I didn’t push them. I just listened and sometimes tried to help. Things that would come out that I could then share with Frank, so he had another source. In that sense, I was really more part of the School than I thought.”

Indeed, alumni recall Maia as “our campus mom.” She was seen at athletic games and at school plays and musical performances. She did not hesitate to instruct on grammar or manners at the dinner table, but “she listened to you, as if you were her own, and for those special moments, you were the only other person in the world, a rare gift.” She was kind, but she could also be tough, others recalled. “There was nothing more depressing than knowing you had disappointed Mrs. Brogan. She could give you a look without words that told you everything you needed to know.”

Architect Richard Spisto, Frank and Maia Brogan, and Joe Blount ’74 at the dedication of Brogan House June, 2003

Maia spoke gratefully then of the tremendous opportunity as a Headmaster’s wife. “It has been a chance to be for a great many young people what most parents can be only for their own children.” Perhaps she believed that reading the code of teenage communication was her greatest career accomplishment.

The Brogans left Storm King School in 1974 to move to Florida for Frank to become Headmaster of the Ransom Everglades School and Meg to attend high school, then Rollins College.

In 1978, Frank ended a long and distinguished educational career as Principal of the Upper School at Friends Academy, a Quaker co-educational college preparatory school in Locust Valley, NY. Maia had also worked at Friends Academy in the Admissions Department where students from the school were regular visitors. In the last year of Maia’s life, she got a call from one of the parents from Friends Academy –who had just become a grandmother–to let her know that her son had named his daughter in honor of Maia.

Frank and Maia lived a life of travel and learning over their 65 years of marriage. They journeyed to Central America, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Gibraltar and Casablanca. They traveled on The Orient Express. They found themselves in Cape Town, South Africa, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and in Berlin, Germany, when the Berlin Wall fell. The walls of their homes were covered by bookshelves and loaded with books on many topics, but with a particularly large area for poetry. They spoke about authors and writers like many speak about the weather. In later years, when Maia’s eyesight began to fail, Frank read The New York Times to her every day.

The Brogans in their golden years

The Brogans retired to Westminster Retirement Community in Winter Park, Florida in 1996. They were drawn by the beauty of the area where Meg had spent her college years, and by the Westminster community’s intellectual stimulation, social support, and an abundance of events and activities. Frank taught poetry for adult education classes at Rollins College and Maia was on the local library board and volunteered for hospice.

After Frank’s death at 89 years of age on July 31, 2013, Maia remained in Winter Park with her supportive community of friends and no shortage of activities for her inquisitive mind. She exercised daily with discipline, walking briskly on the Westminster grounds, swimming and taking aerobics classes. A nephew took up Frank’s role of reading The Times to Maia, and she fed her intellect by listening to books on tape every day. Fiercely independent, Maia insisted on hosting and cooking for her guests and past students who came to visit in her later years. Her refrigerator was covered with cards, postcards and handwritten notes from students and friends from the past, whom she would greet when they called on the telephone with a cheery “Hello, love!” She seemed never to forget a single student who had crossed their path.

In February 2018, Maia moved to the Boston area to be closer to her daughter, Meg, and family, and enjoyed visiting with her 96-year-old brother and 92-year-old sister, as well as spending time with her five grandchildren. She was eager to visit The Storm King School in June 2018 for the reunion, but was unable to make the trip. At the reunion, Meg made videos of past students and colleagues that brought joy to Maia in her last months. She couldn’t see the faces, but recognized the voices and recalled memories that brought a smile to her face.

Maia passed away peacefully on the evening of December 6, 2018. Having been ill for some time, just days before she died the nurses told Meg that they couldn’t believe how long she fought on for life. A nurse asked her how she was still hanging on, and Maia replied, “Tough Swede!” Meg noted that Maia died, ironically, hours before December 7, Pearl Harbor Day.

Meg recalls that throughout Maia’s life, she always gave Frank the full credit for success; coming from an era in which the woman supports the man. She describes her mom as a tough and stoic Swede who recognized wonderful talents in Frank and helped him through the repercussions of war; supported them financially so that he could focus on his studies at UMass Amherst and Harvard; and was flexible and supportive about many moves, that enriched their lives and his professional career. They adopted three children and lost two, which was heart-wrenching for both of them. Through all of this, Maia continued to be strong, knowing that they could get through it together, and still help and be an influence on students at the schools where they brought their amazing partnership. “My mother’s emotional strength and support was a major reason for my father’s success,” Meg says.

Maia Anderson Brogan is buried by the birch tree at the Pond House overlooking Schoolhouse Pond along with Frank and Jed Brogan. It was, and remains, the site of many festive gatherings of friends and family–a place that gave Maia and Frank Brogan both peace and joy.

Meg invites friends to bring stories and memories to a celebration of their lives on Saturday August 24, 2019 at The Pond House in Hyannis Port, MA. Please RSVP to Meg Brogan Adley at mbadley1@yahoo.com or 617-686-6519 or to Lynn Crevling ’72 at 845-458-7517.

Joe Blount ’74 and Maia Brogan at Reunion 2013

REFLECTIONS FROM STUDENTS & FACULTY

"Frank and Maia were parents to us all." — JOE BLOUNT ’74

Jack Downing ’71: She was a great lady of compassion and understanding. Her kindness and caring kept me from dropping out of SKS my senior year.

Hal Cannon ’71: In those years, we had “esprit de corps.”We cared about where we were. We took care of our home, our school. Folks from other schools noticed it and we noticed it when we visited other schools. It was the true legacy of Mr. and Mrs. Brogan–the most impactful influences on my life, other than my parents. They taught the value of honor, class, character, and caring for something other than one’s self. Yes, they were the finest years at a time some other schools were literally disintegrating. Few leaders have been or will be their equal.

Tom Donahue Faculty 1968-1975: There was a saying in the early years of the modern feminist movement in this country. It referred to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers–the great dance duo who appeared together in countless Hollywood movies over a couple of decades. It went like this: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” I always think of that line when the subject. It’s easy to forget nowadays when women, including the wives of headmasters, often have careers of their own, frequently widely different from those of their spouses. They go off each morning to do battle on fields quite alien to the halls of academe where their husbands hold sway. That was not the case in times past. It was certainly not the case at The Storm King School in the years when Frank and Maia were there. On opening day one year, the assistant headmaster of the School began his remarks to the parents and students by saying: “I want to clear up a misconception right now. The real assistant headmaster is sitting right over there. Her name is Maia Brogan.” He was right. And some years later, when Frank had accepted a position as school head in Florida and was closing out his last spring at Storm King, one of the Trustees asked him, quite seriously, if it would be possible for Maia to stay on at the school for some time to help the Trustees transition to a new administration. She was everywhere, and she was everywhere all the time. She never hesitated to praise, to cajole, to smile at, or just to be a presence in the life of anyone on the campus, faculty or student. She also babysat. She hosted monthly teas for faculty wives. She cooked a truly great dinner at the Christmas break for some 60 people counting faculty, faculty wives, buildings and grounds crew, and anyone who happened to be visiting the campus at the time. She did all that and still had the time to socialize and laugh and visit with people whom she thought she might have neglected. I remember those dinners with enormous fondness; the house decorated for the season, a fire in the fireplace, the welcoming feel of it all, the anticipation of a couple weeks off. And it was she, not caterers, who did it all, and, I assume, the cleanup that followed. Small boarding schools can sometimes be tough places to live and work, especially when the weather closes in, or some events have taken place that bring the school atmosphere down for a time. And at those times, not surprisingly, people are more likely to be snarky with each other, relationships become strained, people can be pointlessly critical, perhaps, or simply less than friendly. In the seven years that I lived on the campus, I never, ever, heard ANYONE be critical of Maia. On the contrary, she was always the rock, the steadfast and dependable figure of warmth, eternally upbeat (or so it seemed), always off and doing good things for the place and the people in it. That is always the way I remember her. I’ll bet I have lots of company in that feeling.