Meeting by Chance Revealed a Special Connection to Mr. Gunn

On August 21, Head of School Peter Becker had the good fortune to meet the Reverend Peter Gunn Cheney ’65, who he discovered serendipitously was not only an alumnus, but a descendant of school founder Frederick Gunn.

“Amy Julia and I were just on vacation, the two of us, nearby Kennebunkport, Maine. A friend had said, ‘While you’re in the area, if you’re looking for a place to go to church’ — and she didn’t even put it that way; she said ‘a spiritual experience’ — I highly recommend the 8 a.m. chapel service at St. Ann’s Church in Kennebunkport, and you have to meet my friend, Peter Cheney.’”

The Beckers went to the service, which turned out to be notable for a few reasons. First, unbeknownst to them, it was Cheney’s final service after serving as the chaplain of St. Ann’s, a summer parish, for 21 years. “He was clearly beloved. The place was packed at eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday in August. The chapel itself overlooks the ocean. It’s the most spectacular outdoor chapel, completely the most beautiful space on the planet. As we approached, I knew that the church was close to the Bush family compound, and then I noticed Secret Service parked outside,” Becker recalled. “At this point, I didn’t know who Peter Cheney was, I didn’t know it was his last service. So we sit down, and then these big SUVs pull up, and former president George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush and the Bush family pile out and walk into this outdoor chapel and sit down. And I’m like, ‘What is going on?’”

Cheney delivered a beautiful sermon that even included stories about baseball. However, the Beckers still did not know about his special connection to Mr. Gunn and the school. “Given how many people there were, and that we were just visitors, I decided not to bother him. I went back to the inn where we were staying and I said, ‘Well, let me find his email address and just send him an email and say how special it was to be there and introduce myself. I looked him up on the church’s website, and in his bio, it says that he was a former chaplain at St. Paul’s School, former Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES), and it says: ‘I have been profoundly influenced in every part of my life and work with students and adults by my ancestor Frederick W. Gunn, the 19th century abolitionist who founded The Gunnery.’ Well! I nearly dropped my phone and fell out of my chair,” Becker said, continuing: “The 10 a.m. service was about to start and we were close enough that I could get back to the church before that service. So I jumped back on my bike, sped back to the goodbye reception that was happening between the services, and basically ran up to him and said, ‘Peter Cheney, I’m Peter Becker, the Head of The Frederick Gunn School.’ And he replied, ‘I knew I recognized you!’”

What followed was what Becker described as “an amazing five-minute conversation about Frederick Gunn and the school,” after which the two men exchanged contact information. They reconnected in September via Zoom. “The fact that he and I connected is great, but he’s very proud of Frederick Gunn, and he’s very proud of the school,” Becker said. “It’s an amazing story.”

A common ancestor

Cheney spent his entire career working in independent schools and ministry in the Episcopal Church, and has been inspired throughout his life by Mr. Gunn. “His spirit of faith, open inquiry, and concern for the freedom and welfare of others has shaped my sense of vocation and understanding of leadership,” he said.

A look into the Gunn family genealogy showed that Cheney and Mr. Gunn had a common ancestor in 17th century Scotland. Cheney is related to Mr. Gunn via his mother, Winona Ann Gunn P’65, who was born in 1916 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and passed away in 1997. His maternal grandfather, Theodore Warren Gunn (1886-1968), was descended seven generations from Nathaniel Gunn (1637 - 1663), who was the brother of Jobamah Gunn, (1641-1715), the great-great-greatgrandfather of Frederick William Gunn. Nathaniel and Jobamah were among the six children of Dr. Jasper Gunn, born in 1606 in Scotland.

Asked how he arrived at The Frederick Gunn School in the fall of 1961, Cheney said, “It was a complete coincidence.”

“My father was an Episcopal minister,” he said, referring to the late Rev. Francis X. Cheney P’65, who was a professor at Yale Divinity School and Director of Development for Berkeley Divinity School. The Cheney Lecture is given in alternate years in his memory. “We moved to Connecticut in 1959, to an area where boarding schools were very common. My eighth grade science teacher knew I was struggling and said, ‘You know, you should think about boarding school.’ Gunn was one of the schools we looked at.”

As a student here, Cheney became aware of the school’s history, and absorbed the “ethos that Frederick Gunn created.”

“Things have changed over the years, but there was always a sort of aura about that. Of course, Mr. Gunn loved baseball,” said Cheney, who played baseball at Gunn. “As I became an adult, I read about Mr. Gunn, and the more I read, the more I became amazed.”

A career in education and ministry

After graduating from Gunn, Cheney earned a bachelor’s degree in economic and business administration from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and a Master’s of Divinity from Virginia

Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Ordained by the Episcopal Church in 1975, Cheney was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He also holds a graduate certification in pastoral counseling, with an emphasis on adolescent development, from Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and is a clinical member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.

From 1998 to 2007, he served as Executive Director of NAES, which is headquartered in New York City and supports over 1,000 Episcopal schools and their leaders throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Cheney has consulted with Episcopal and other private schools throughout the United States on matters of mission, governance and leadership transition, and has conducted or facilitated 16 head-of-school searches.

Before moving to Connecticut, Cheney lived in the Midwest with his family, but he always felt drawn to New Hampshire, where his parents originated. Over the course of a decade, he served in a variety of roles at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, principally as Chaplain and School Counselor, and as Director of Admissions. From 2006-2015, he was a Trustee and chaired the Trustees and Governance Committee at St. Paul’s. In 2010, Cheney moved to Tucson, Arizona, and spent over five years as Senior Associate Priest and Director of Development at St. Philip’s in The Hills Parish, a 2,000-member congregation in Tucson. He also served as an Associate Priest at the Episcopal Church of St. Michael’s and All Angels and as a member and past president of the Board of Trustees for St. Michael’s School.

He has not been back to campus for some time, although he did deliver the Commencement Address in 2005, encouraging the graduating class to recognize their intrinsic self-worth, to develop their own life story and avoid “following someone else’s plotline,” and to approach life with joy in the moment.

In September, Cheney and his wife, Kiki, returned to Tucson, where they plan to retire. Via email, he promised to stay in touch with Becker. “It really was wonderful to meet you and such a gift to me that you were at St. Ann’s on my final Sunday.”

He also shared a photo, taken in Kennebunkport in August, and said: “President Bush ’43 and Laura, like his parents [Barbara and George H. W. Bush], were are very active members of St. Ann’s. At a farewell party for my wife, Kiki, and me that week he shared some kind remarks and presented us with this painting for our home. It was a wonderful moment. Typical of his humor, he said to me later, ‘It will be worth more after I die!’ Hah!”

For the Miller Family, a Homecoming

This June, Ogden D. Miller, Jr. ’50 P’84 returned to Gunn for Alumni Weekend, which he celebrated for the first time in many years with his daughter, Anne Miller Leonard ’84. In fact, father and daughter could hardly recall the last time they were on campus together. Ogden was a middle school student when he arrived here in December 1945 as a faculty child with his brothers, David P. Miller II ’54 and Dwight D. Miller ’55, and their parents, Anne S. and Ogden D. Miller, Sr. H’69 P’50 ’54 ’55 GP’84. What follows is an excerpt of their conversation about their recent homecoming.

Anne: My dad was at The Gunnery the very first year that my grandfather was there, as a freshman, and then he actually changed schools and ended up going to Hotchkiss. I believe Grandpère, who was my grandfather, thought it would be easier on my dad to not be the Headmaster’s son

Ogden: Partly, partly!

Anne: It’s a good story. My dad was such a hooligan he had to go to another school — No, I’m kidding!

Ogden: We moved there just after Christmas of 1945. I went to grammar school in the Depot. One of my classmates was Dave Hoadley ’51.

Anne: He would call my father every year on his birthday because they were — how many days apart?

Ogden: Five days.

Anne: Five days apart. So he would call my father every year and gloat about how he was younger than my dad now. (laughter)

Ogden: Anyway, my only year there, I was living in Gibson. As you may know from history, the Bartlett dormitory burned down, and fortunately, nobody was hurt. It was in February of ’47… I remember it. We watched the whole thing. Of course, in February, it was freezing and they were trying to pump water up from the pond, what we used to call The Mayflower pond. There wasn’t enough water from fire plugs [hydrants] and so they had to pump water all the way up the hill there. There are pictures of Bartlett. It was a great, big, wood structure. My parents were living in Hurlburt then, and they … turned it into dormitories [for the students who had been living in Bartlett]. I think they were all seniors. I remember a couple of them. There was a guy named Bill Hillman ’46, who probably must have been one of the most brilliant students the school ever saw. He came out first in everything I think every year he was there, and [the late] John Bauer ’48, who would come in second.

Ogden: The thing we were both struck by at The Gunnery [on Alumni Weekend] was most of the people there, of course, I had never met. As I said, I was there in 1946, and then went away to Hotchkiss the following fall. The most common thing we heard from all of these events was how marvelous my father was in dealing with people. I talked to a couple of guys who had even been expelled and were still coming to reunions. They said my father had been correct, and how human he was about it all, and he did a lot to help students get into other schools.

Anne: That part, I think, was fascinating because I was going with my dad and people would hear his name, and [say to my dad], ‘Oh my God! Your father changed my life.’ It didn’t happen just once. It happened over and over and over again. It was fascinating because my grandfather died when I was 12, so I remember him, but I didn’t know him as an adult or for the things he did. I remember him teaching us how to clean fish at Cape Cod and those sorts of things, but nothing to do with school.

Ogden: My father’s funeral was in the Congregational Church there on the Green. It was one of the most moving ceremonies I’ve ever been to. His pallbearers were his five brothers and three sons. And the person carrying the cross in and out was my oldest son. The place was absolutely packed because even after he left The Gunnery as Headmaster … if the town had a meeting about something or other, my father would invariably be there, running the thing.

Anne: He was very involved in Washington.

What did it feel like to be back on campus together?

Anne: It was so cool because I hadn’t been to Washington, Connecticut, since my grandmother had died, and that was 23 years ago. A lot of stuff was new, or has been redone since I went there, but also, so many of the buildings stayed the same. It’s such a beautiful place. We went and drove all over. I lived with my grandmother my senior year in school. I actually went to Shepaug, and ended up graduating from Shepaug. We drove around and went to all the old houses and went to the cemetery and went to all the houses that my dad had grown up in. It was really sentimental. Both of my grandparents are buried in the cemetery next to St. John’s, on the hill.

Ogden: Both in my high school years and in college, I would go back on vacations and there was a whole group of us … who were from there — David Hoadley and Andy Whitman — and we would all invariably end up going to what was The Gunnery hockey pond, and put the headlights on, and we would all go skating. And then, I don’t know if you knew Curtis Titus ’50? He was in my class there. His family, the Titus family, ran a big chicken/egg farm. We would all go from the hockey pond up there and we’d have scrambled eggs and bacon at about 4 o’clock. That was wonderful.

Ogden: My father was a Trustee at the school when he was asked to become Headmaster in 1945. The previous headmaster had been ill, and my father was then Director of Athletics at Yale. So I grew up at Yale, living in Hamden, and as I said, we came up just after Christmas ’45. He was only 40 years old. He was born 1905. We lived in Hurlburt and … the last house was the one I think it was called 1773 [between The Cottage and 10 Kirby Road]. If you stand on the front porch, you could look down the aisle of the Congregational Church. I mean, literally, it was right across, and right in front of it was what was called the Gunn Elm, which was an enormous elm tree, which God knows dated from, well, the American Revolution or something, and which finally succumbed to the Dutch elm disease. It killed half the elms in America.

Ogden: My mother’s last residence out there was in that building right next to The PO [Woodruff House]. My mother lived there for three or four years, until her health meant she couldn’t drive anymore. She moved to Noble Horizons up in Salisbury. My last visit to her was at Noble Horizons. She was 90 by then. Wonderful woman. You know, of course, the penicillin businesses. She was the first American to be saved by penicillin. She was cured at YaleNew Haven Hospital of a streptococcus blood infection. I think she was pregnant and lost what would have been her fourth boy. It’s absolutely an incredible story. I’ve been interviewed for it. An Australian film company came and interviewed me. I said, ‘I was nine years old.’ I have a picture right here of her with [Sir] Alexander Fleming, who came to visit her shortly thereafter. This happened in 1942. Her obituary in The New York Times was a lot bigger than my father’s! There are books about it.

Anne, did you hear a lot of stories at Alumni Weekend that you had not heard before?

Anne: I went to school with Katie Lyons ’83. There were a few other people that I’d gone to school with, but Katie was the only one I saw, really. I hung out with my dad and my uncle [Dwight Miller] and Bruce Bradshaw ’51. It was just fun listening to them all reminisce about things from being in school, the things they did, and different people.

Ogden: Do you know Bruce? One of the school’s most famous athletes. Rod Beebe was a teacher there and crew coach, and my brother, David, married one of the daughters, Trudy, and Bruce married Stephanie. They were sisters. Bruce was a famous athlete because he was so good at, you know, basketball or football or baseball, or anything. There were those stories.

Ogden: My parents met on an ocean liner when she was taken by the family to go to Europe and my father was hired to take care of a 14-year-old boy who needed tutoring, and he had just graduated from Yale. They fell madly in love. He ended up marrying my beautiful mother, who was 22 or 23 years old. The family gave them a wedding trip in 1932. They went back to Europe and, low and behold on that trip, guess who was conceived! I was born the following year. One of the happiest marriages you ever saw. They worshipped each other. Unfortunately, my father died at 73. He was one of nine children.

Do you remember where your father’s office was when he was

Head of School?

Ogden. I remember both offices. The first one was in Gibson. Later on, he moved to Bourne, but when we went there [in 1945], Bourne was still owned by the Bourne family. The school had always hoped that someday the Bourne family would give the property to the school, because it immediately adjoined everything. But it didn’t happen, and the school ended up buying it, years later. The story I always heard was that Mr. Bourne, whose money came from Singer Sewing Machine, I believe, had that wall built to give work to anybody in the town who wanted to work, and could do that kind of work, so it was partly charitable. But my father’s office was where I guess the headmaster’s office is now. My parents lived in Bourne there, until he retired [in 1969]. When I would visit, when I was in college or in the Army, that’s where I would stay.

It’s fun to remember all these places.

Anne: I really enjoyed the trip and you know my husband asked me, ‘Did you see your friends?’ I was like, ‘Well, I saw a couple,’ but it was really more about hanging with my dad and my uncle and that generation. I really spent all my time with them and it was more fun listening to all their stories and them laughing at all the things they did. They were talking about when they would go down to Steep Rock or go downtown to the Depot. A lot of these guys were at The Gunnery and then they went to Yale. Even at the dinner, it was just fascinating listening to them all talking about different classmates. The sad part was that a lot of them were like, ‘Yes, he’s gone,’ especially my dad missing David Hoadley was a big one. But they all had comments about things that they did, you know, coming in late, just the typical things that happen at every boarding school. It could be the same thing in my generation. It just was fun to sit there and spend time with them all. I’m so glad that I got to do it.

From the alumni association executive committee

The past two years have taught us a lot, but one of the biggest takeaways from the pandemic is how invaluable teachers are to our day-to-day lives. At The Frederick Gunn School, we believe our faculty are the heirs and stewards of Mr. Gunn’s vision as they mentor students in the classroom, on the athletic fields, and throughout our vibrant learning community. Take a moment and reflect on a teacher, coach, or dorm parent who, despite teenage angst and sophomoric tendencies, cared enough to push you to be your best 17, 18, or 19-yearold self.

Since Mr. Gunn founded our school, teachers have shown their care and compassion for students in a variety of ways. They play a pivotal role in empowering students to hone their gifts, commit themselves to others, and prepare to enter the great conversations of life. As a faculty child, I remember countless students at our house, doing their laundry, sitting at our kitchen table, and unloading their worries on my mom, Susan Eanes H’91 P’90 GP’20 ’23 ’25. As a dorm head, my husband, Richard P’20 ’23 ’25, and I had the Butler and Gibson boys in our house on Saturday nights for food. We entrusted our children to them when we needed babysitters. I gave math help at our kitchen table.

I continue to be in awe of the compassion and care that Frederick Gunn School teachers give students. There is no doubt that our campus looks beautiful, that our new buildings (and plans for new buildings) are incredible, and that the need for a growing endowment is critical. To continue Mr. Gunn’s legacy, the school needs to evolve and adapt with the times. And, (not but, and) while it evolves and grows and adapts, the one constant is the day-to-day, in-the-trenches commitment of the on-the-ground faculty — the people coaching JV Girls Lacrosse and teaching Algebra I, the people doing dorm duty with sophomore boys, and driving the vans to the lake every day for crew practice; the people who demonstrate to students day in and day out what it means to Be a Force for Good.

You are a living testament to Mr. Gunn’s legacy and proof of the power of place-based learning. As alumni, you are the product of our teachers’ devotion. And your story is one our students need to witness. Get involved, come back to campus, speak with students, mentor young alumni, make meaningful donations to the annual fund, and spread the word about our school. Tell your Gunn story, connect with your classmates, and thank a teacher who changed your life.

In doing some — or all — of the above, you will ensure Mr. Gunn’s vision for our school continues to thrive, and that teachers have the support they need to do their best work. Most importantly, you will show the world that our alumni are a force for good, just like Mr. Gunn envisioned 173 years ago.

Go Gunn,

Laura Eanes Martin ’90 P’20 ’23 ’25 President, Alumni Association Executive Committee