The Headmasters Papers (27 page)

Nevertheless—and equally puzzling—many readers felt that, however tragic his outcome, my headmaster would be a force for good in schools they know. From a young New York City novelist.

I liked that lovely, out of his time John Greeve. I wish he had been in charge of Haaren High on West 59th when I started teaching there. I think he coulda turned the joint around. (In real life it's being sandblasted into a major motion picture studio.)

Ellis Amburn, then editorial director at Putnam's, attributed Greeve's decline to a failure of the age:

If we continue to let men of honor and conscience and conviction such as Greeve be rubbed out by the rules of pettiness and greed, fear and accommodation, who will then be left to pass on to the next generation the sacred wafer of culture?

A veteran English teacher from Wellesley, Mass., wrote to say the account of Greeve's troubles somehow lightened her own:

What a bleak picture of the erosion of integrity in today's systems! One can only grieve if your John O. Greeve is indeed a vanishing breed as many of us in the ed. biz intermittently fear. The death of the value he represents has far-reaching consequences.

. . . I, an English teacher of twenty-five years and a Bread Loafer, and Frank, also an English teacher, now head of a middle school, thank you for lessening our own loneliness through your sharing of this familiar world.

Relatives write, too, and I know no deeper reader than my librarian uncle, Paul Breitsprecher. He read the book's conclusion as neither an affirmation nor a betrayal, but rather as a kind of existential question mark.

I sensed that you carefully balanced Greeve between strengths and weaknesses, between past and present ideals. Greeve had a fatal flaw. He couldn't bridge the contradictory demands placed on him by his circumstances, nor could he bend to accommodate himself to those demands. He could only seek solace in oblivion. One wonders whether he found solace in oblivion?

A Georgia psychologist felt the conclusion, however emotionally aversive, gave rise to positive hope.

As a clinician psychologist and psychotherapist, I felt moved by John O. Greeve. I admired his willingness to take a stand on important concerns—education generally, drugs specifically. I empathized with his pathos, as one who experientially knows depression, mourning and grief only could. My anger at his suicide reflects, I suppose, my hope that intellectual and emotional integrity
can
find nurturance in a chaotically pragmatic world.

It may have been irrational on my part to hope that my book would fortify, not depress, those who actually work in schools. It was thus gratifying to hear from a young boarding school teacher and dean:

As an English teacher and dean at Choate Rosemary Hall, I found the book articulating thoughts and challenges of school life and leadership that are in the background of my day-to-day efforts . . . I would certainly like to work for or as John Greeve some day.

Or this from a young Louisville man on the brink of a school career:

I am a doctoral candidate in the field of education. It is encouraging . . . to meet a man, John Greeve, who so cares about his place in life and its meaning.

I am sorry for his tragedies, but I am encouraged by his notions about the world and our place in it, the ways open to us to increase its worth to us all.

Which goes to show: very often the last thing you expect, much less deserve, you get.

R.A.H.

Richard A. Hawley is headmaster of the University School in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches philosophy and history. His essays, stories, and poems have appeared in
The New York Times, The Atlantic, Commonweal, Christian Science Monitor,
and
American Film.
He lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.