5 minute read
From the Head of School
Dear Westminster School Community,
Who would have thunk it? Charlie Griffith, P’11,’14,’17, is also a counter of rings. Like all faculty for the past 136 years of Westminster history, Charlie wears many hats — teacher, coach, dorm parent, advisor, driver, chaperone, tutor, chef, confidant — far too many key roles to fully capture with just a noun, and this summer he added tree ring counter to that repertoire.
On Friday afternoon of Aug. 2, Williams Hill and the surrounding area experienced a microburst that left incredible damage in its wake. Luckily no one was hurt in the storm and, at Westminster, we experienced very little building damage.
The storm wreaked havoc on campus trees. Within minutes many towering oaks and pine trees were ripped out by the roots or sheared in half by the 80-100 miles per hour winds. Once the dust had settled, Charlie started counting rings.
Two other powerful storms have impacted the tree canopy on campus. The first is the Hurricane of 1938, which hit Connecticut on Sept. 21, and caused devastating damage and significant loss of life and injuries. On campus, among the wreckage, we lost “The Great Oak,” which had long stood gracefully on the Hill. The second storm was the Great Ice Storm of 2010, whose timing was near the end of Parents Weekend, allowing for all students to be safely off campus. That long fall weekend was extended to a full week both to manage the cleanup and, more importantly, the return of electricity. Not a complaint was heard from any student about the extra days of break.
After each storm, parts of campus looked decidedly different, and such is the case this year because of the microburst. As Charlie Griffith inventoried the damage, he counted tree rings; in general, he found that the pines had between 80-100 rings to reflect each year of their growth, and the white and red oaks had between 150-170 rings that marked their lifeline. To see these trees provokes powerful emotions –– shock that something so mighty could be felled so quickly and grief because the very beautiful trees that have sheltered us from storms, both literal and metaphorical, are gone.
One red oak boasted 178 rings. That tree began its life essentially three centuries ago, just prior to the advent of the Civil War. One cannot help but ponder the profound history that this tree witnessed. And as it was germinating and building strong roots in the soil of Williams Hill, so, too, were the educational ideas and dreams of William Cushing. So many of the trees lost in the microburst were growing in 1900 when Cushing opened the doors of Westminster in Simsbury, and for the past 124 years those trees have looked over generations of Martlets. They have seen so much in our own history, including watershed moments like the move to coeducation, and many important smaller daily moments of life and growth, of heartache and happiness.
Our campus does look different, a fact that is reinforced by every alumnus who visited campus this past June for our Flock Reunion, but not solely because the tree canopy has changed. It is because Westminster, like every good school, is evolving. The past 20 years on the Hill have been marked by significant construction and the new facilities — including Armour Academic Center,
Center, and the new dormitories of Gund, Squibb and Kelter — help to set our school apart, emphasize our distinctive community and offer inspiring spaces for living and learning. Through our strategic initiatives we have embarked on a plan to ensure that all of our programs — academic, athletic, arts, residential, communal — build the knowledge, skills and experiences that our students need to thrive at Westminster and beyond.
It is the people within our spaces, though, both the ones dedicated to wearing many hats and the ones who proudly don the black and gold, who have not changed their essence. Faculty wrap their arm around a student’s shoulder and students readily engage with one another or adults; we hold doors and offer smiles and greetings. We pause to break bread together. We act according to the “common good.”
We will plant more trees, of course, and they will grow strong and beautiful as they mature alongside the next many generations of Martlets. As the Greek proverb notes, “Society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit,” and the same is true for the work that we do on this campus.
As faculty wear our many different hats, we are “planting trees” that imbue our students with grit and grace; that focus them on our core values of character, community, involvement and balance; that inspire them “to reach well beyond the ordinary” and “to commit to a life of service beyond self.” Those behaviors and expectations are deeply rooted in the Westminster ethos, and they are not easily shaken or felled by even the strongest of storms.
With grit, grace and gratitude,
