School Names First Thomas R. King ’60 Family Chair for Excellence in Teaching

On September 8, the community gathered inside the historic Meeting House on The Green to celebrate Convocation and the beginning of our 173rd year as a school. The highlight of this year’s ceremony was the presentation of a new teaching chair. Kelsey Brush of the Mathematics Department faculty was named the first recipient of the Thomas R. King ’60 Family Chair for Excellence in Teaching. The award was presented by Head of School Peter Becker and Trustee Tom King ’60.

The Thomas R. King Family Chair was created through the leadership and generosity of King and his wife, Kathy. Their gift of $1 million to the school’s endowment was given to honor esteemed Frederick Gunn School educators, specifically in the fields of science, technology, engineering, math, and entrepreneurship. This chair will be bestowed on a rotating basis, once every three years, to an exemplary member of the school’s faculty. Each recipient will receive an immediate financial stipend that the school will renew annually for as long as the honored faculty member is employed by the school.

“We are extremely grateful as a school to recognize you, Tom and Kathy, and your recognition of the importance of the teaching faculty,” Becker said. “Thank you for your leadership and generosity to make the Thomas R. King Family Chair for Excellence in Teaching possible.”

King was appointed to the Board of Trustees in April 2020. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Boston University and earned his MBA from Boston College. Following service in the U.S. Air Force and the New York Air National Guard, he worked at Lehman Brothers as a security analyst following the metal industries. He later joined Merrill Lynch, where he was Vice President of Merrill Lynch Asset Management. In 1984, he joined the Trust and Estates Department of Chemical Bank as an Investment Manager. Following several mergers, the resulting organization became known as J.P. Morgan Chase, from which King retired in 2004 as Vice President of Investments in its Personal Asset Management Division. He and Kathy reside in Stamford, Connecticut.

Addressing the community, King reflected on the four years he spent at Gunn as the most important time in his education. Whenever and wherever he and members of the Class of 1960 gather, he said “invariably, the conversation comes around to the teachers that we had over the years, and the impact that they had on us.”

“I thought back to … the number of people that I interacted with here, at what was then The Gunnery, who had a profound impact on who I became and the success I achieved,” he said, telling current students, “When people like Kelsey have a profound impact on you — that shows up down the road. Hopefully, you’ll be able to look back and realize that’s going to be true for you as well, and hopefully, you will remember and give back as we did over the years.”

In August, Dan Fladager, Director of Outdoor Programs, led a small group of faculty on a three-night backpacking trip in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, where they hiked, swam, relaxed, and learned more about the backpacking programming available to Gunn students through Gunn Outdoors.

“Faculty were able to get accustomed to the backpacking system and rituals we use for creating meaningful moments of learning for Gunn students while keeping them safe outside,” said Fladager, who welcomed faculty with any level of experience, even those who had never been backpacking before.

The faculty program was organized the same way it would be for students. Gunn Outdoors provided all of the necessary gear and food. Faculty learned how to organize and carry their packs, navigate through the wilderness, sleep in a tent, and cook a meal over a camp stove. They hiked five to 10 miles per day, and learned the importance of gathering students in a circle for community moments three times each day. “When you wake up, everyone gets in a circle. We share something about ourselves that no one else knows and go over the plan for the day. We assign a student leader for the day,” Fladager said, explaining that the ritual of these circles is repeated in the afternoon and evening, each time with a different focus (such as a game in the evening), and is a great way to debrief and check in to see how everyone is doing.

“This was a great opportunity to learn a new skill, and to just spend some time outdoors with each other,” Fladager said of the faculty trip, which he plans to offer annually, with the goal of helping more faculty become knowledgeable and experienced enough to lead student backpacking trips themselves. “Faculty learned what students go through on a typical day and how to coach them in outdoor educational experiences. We traveled as a backpacking group and shared strategies for managing group dynamics while learning principles of outdoor education.”