ACADEMY

SUMMER 2023

HEADMASTER

Dennis G. Manning

ASSISTANT HEADMASTER FOR DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Grayson Bryant

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Esther M. Diskin

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Kim Yager

EDITOR

Esther M. Diskin

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Mike Connors

EDITORIAL BOARD

Ruth Payne Acra ’86

Chad Byler

Beth Manning

David Rezelman

Jennifer Rodgers ’97

Gigi Cooke Tysinger ’87

Elbert Watson

Sean Wetmore ’86

Charlotte Zito ’99

PHOTOGRAPHY

Mike Connors

Esther M. Diskin

Steven Goldburg ’04

Stephanie Kalis

Matthew Lester

Kim Yager

DESIGN

RiverBend Design & Lyons Graphics

Norfolk Academy admits students of any race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, color, and national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, color, and national or ethnic origin, or any other basis prohibited by federal or state law in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, employment policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic or other schooladministered programs.

COVER: Headmaster Dennis G. Manning stands in the Wynne Courtyard in front of the fountain at the start of academic year 2022–23, The Year of Kindness, the final year of his tenure.

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IN TRIBUTE

Alfred Randolph Jr. ’80: “Trust is the Special Sauce”

Alfred Ritter Jr. ’64: “Call a Rising Star”

Rev. Harold James Cobb Jr.: “A Once-in-a-Generation Pivotal Leader”

Price Massey Hall ’02: “Building Genuine Relationships”

Student Tributes: “Full of Wonder”

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CURRICULAR INNOVATION

CREATING A BEAUTIFUL CAMPUS TO ELEVATE LEARNING

BUILDING DIVERSITY & STRENGTHENING A SENSE OF BELONGING

STRENGTHENING THE HONOR SYSTEM

21 “DEAR MR. MANNING,” POEM BY TIM SEIBLES

Dear Norfolk Academy Family,

It is time to say goodbye to a school, community, and dear friends whom I have grown to love these past 22 years. Though I hope to have imparted something to students and colleagues here, I have been more deeply enriched by and learned far more from the Academy experience than I could ever have imagined I would or that I could ever repay. From the moment I stepped onto campus in late June 2001, I have been bettered, challenged, and elevated by a prevailing ethos of excellence and unrelenting aspiration to be even better — all for the children we serve. Here are a few simple lessons I’ve learned.

Children are sacred. As Wordsworth reminds us, “The Child Is Father of the Man … And I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety.” Childhood is our highest, most precious and sacred condition, and adults must act consistently, without apology, in the interest of children — and in a way that preserves as best we can their natural piety — their innate virtue, innocence, and goodness. As simple as it sounds, Norfolk Academy exists to serve and advance children, to prepare them morally, spiritually, and intellectually to become useful and responsible citizens of a democracy and thus help them create a just society. That’s a mission to wake to each morning and be called to serve alongside faculty brothers and sisters.

The best of human institutions, like Norfolk Academy, matter more than ever. Throughout history human institutions, though inherently imperfect but nonetheless our greatest vehicles for progress, have been the building blocks and foundation for cultures, societies, and civilizations. Great human institutions have a high, soaring purpose, a mission worth embracing and pursuing, worth driving toward, as well as a reason to exist. Norfolk Academy’s purpose (why does the school exist?) we memorialize in a “Statement of Philosophy and Objectives”; it states eloquently but forcefully what we aspire as an institution to inculcate in children, what we believe is most important to develop in them from early childhood to graduation as young, independent, honorable, intelligent, consequential, and selfless adults. This powerful Statement of Philosophy and Objectives animates the school by giving the head of school a clear charge and mission to deliver and by providing an imperative for the head to identify, assemble, and lead with all his will and unyielding ambition the men and women, the faculty, in delivering the school’s mission and moving a distinctive culture forward.

Leadership matters. These grand aspirations that we espouse for children in our Statement of Philosophy and Objectives can only happen through the agency, efficacy, and power of a Board of Trustees supporting the head of the school, the administration, and the faculty, while brooking no interference from outside parties who might alter, wittingly or unwittingly, the mission or direction of the school. The Board, cognizant

MAJOR EVENTS IN DENNIS MANNING’S 22 YEARS AS HEADMASTER

Olympic Soccer Gold Medalist Angela Hucles ‘96 visits always of its sacred and fiduciary responsibility, provides resource, strategic direction, and perhaps most important, guardianship — a protective hand over the mission and the deliverers of that mission, the faculty. Its trusteeship and trust allow institutional momentum to gather in flywheel fashion around the deliverers and recipients of the school’s mission, with its centripetal force deriving from its very center or core — a shared belief that first, character formation is our chief end and aim in a student’s formation and, second, the faculty is Norfolk Academy’s most important fixed asset, for these men and women drive the school’s philosophy.

Truth, Integrity, and Character matter more than ever. This student generation has been witness to the most profound erosion and serial lapses in moral leadership in the history of our country — they have seen truth and reality manipulated and digitized to a point where distortion, equivocation, ambiguity now supersede clarity, moral courage, and plain old honesty. With the advent of AI, integrity as we have known and defined it will become even more elusive. This is not a time to shrink from challenge. I am reminded of 19th century scholar John Ruskin’s charge: “The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.”

This is a time to call us all to moral leadership, to reinforce the value of our school’s more-than-century-long commitment to an honor system, to character formation, citizenship, leadership, and service. The future of truth, honor, integrity may seem up for grabs, but I know where the Academy has always stood on these loftiest principles.

A life of the mind matters. In a final Upper School Chapel I shared 19th century English poet John Keats’s sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” a poem Keats dashed off in one sitting to capture the exhilaration reading provided him — a single translation of Homer, a journey only his imagination could provide him, and an excitement in intellectual and emotional discovery — he felt “like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken,” as if he discovered a new planet or universe. And later in the poem Keats likens his exhilaration to an explorer peering at the Pacific Ocean for the first time, realizing he had discovered the passage to Asia and the East. Whatever excites learning — across the standard disciplines or in new arenas such as our Fellows programs, Medical Scholars, Maymester, or Mini-mester offerings — there are countless ways and means to engage our students’ developing and emerging intellects. We want our students’ minds to be interesting places for them to live and spend time for the rest of their lives. A final coda: the humanities have never been more important, for they provide us a path to more empathetic sensibilities and sensitivities, as well as a quiet refuge where

Campaign for the Fourth Century ends, raising over $40 million Center for Civic and Global Leadership established

E.E. Ford Foundation grant helps launch Chesapeake Bay Fellows

Inaugural classes of Global Health and Global Affairs Fellows

Wes Moore, now governor of Maryland, speaks about his memoir, The Other Wes Moore NA starts exchange with Beijing 101 through World Leading Schools Association

Inaugural class of Literacy Fellows Launch of Engineering, Design, and Innovation (EDI) in the Lower School and EDI Fellows stillness, contemplativeness, and our own inner sanctum disconnect us from plastic pursuits and hollow activities in digital and social media.

Finally, I have learned that a great institution like Norfolk Academy not only produces great people but also attracts them. Over two decades, I have been blessed by friendships with countless alumni of this school; their pride and devotion to this place are extraordinary. I also take great pride in having been able to recruit administrators, faculty, and staff to this school who are outstanding in every regard — passionate about teaching and serving the school; dedicated to coaching athletics, arts, and our vast array of co- and extra-curriculars; and committed to bringing out the best in every child. We see this excellence in employees at this school from top to bottom, many of whom work behind the scenes, unheralded but integral. And of course, new families continue to bring their children to our school. It does not take long for anyone to appreciate the vitality of our community, where the Honor System is the foundation of our sense of trust in one another.

For all of these lessons, all of these friendships, I feel tremendous gratitude. I am grateful, too, for a new friendship, in particular, with Norfolk Academy’s new Head of School Travis Larrabee. It has been a special joy to break bread and share conversation with him and with John Tucker. This school could not be in finer hands, and I know that this community will embrace Travis and his family, as you have embraced Beth and me, and our children, Mary Heath and Will.

I will close with lines that have risen to mind often in recent days, from a poet well known to be a favorite of mine, W.B. Yeats. He closes his 1937 poem “The Municipal Gallery Revisited” with these memorable lines:

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.

Thank you for your friendship and for the inspiration it has provided to me every day over these 22 years. Onward, Bulldogs!

Yours sincerely,

Dennis G. Manning, Headmaster

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Massey Leadership Center and Youngkin

Refectory open

CCGL renamed the Batten Leadership Program

NA-TV, student-led broadcasting, established

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2020

Wynne-Darden Stadium opens

Launch of Mini-mester

Arrival of Class of 2028, first graders who will graduate as the 300th Anniversary Class

Convocation with Governor Terry McAuliffe

Norfolk Academy adopts Diversity, Equity, and Justice Statement

Expanded Lower School opens

Defining Leadership Campaign concludes with $68 million raised

Norfolk Academy opens in-person and with Covid testing program amid the pandemic

Launch of Maymester

Headmaster Manning receives Distinguished Service Award from the Virginia Association for Independent Schools

50th Anniversary of the German Exchange with CopernicusGymnasium Löningen