— By The Reverend Dr. Edward S. Gleason '51; '70, '71 (Hon.)

This July will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Richard Ward Day, the 10th principal of Phillips Exeter Academy (1964-1974). Dick Day and I first met at Christ Church in Exeter, during the service of dedication for their new buildings on Pine Street. He was officially present as principal; I was the preacher. Three months later, he invited me to become school minister at the Academy. My decision to accept was life-changing, primarily because of Dick Day.

Day was first and foremost a teacher-a great one-and I was his pupil. During the four years I worked with him as school minister, and the seven years he lived after my departure, he was a close friend and a valued mentor. Dick was demanding and hard working, but he held himself to the same high standards he expected of others. More than once he said to me, "Ted, there's a better man for your job and a better man for mine." I was determined there be no such person.

As I began as school minister, the Academy was contemplating a major policy change: the end of required church attendance. Dick Day and I discussed this and other issues intensely and often, and after he established the Phillips Church Thursday Morning Meditation service, we met weekly in my office for an hour.

Day was known for his explosions of temper. I experienced only one, after I had blindsided him, unnecessarily. Right after I'd annoyed him, he telephoned, then burst into my office and exploded. "There's never an excuse to surprise me," he said. "I'm always willing to handle any reasonable task, but warn me." I was wrong. I apologized. It never happened again. We remained friends.

During that same first year when the blowup occurred, we also developed a level of trust. He would call and say, "Does my school minister have a moment?" I would walk to his office, wondering what was on his mind. The subjects were wide-ranging.

Two conversations stand out. The first was when Dick was helping me see my way to being the school minister who presided over Phillips Church absent required church attendance-a move my predecessor had resisted. Here is what Dick Day told me: "All you need to do is to make Phillips Church a place students want to come, and they will." It was undeniably true. It was also clear and good leadership, as was the fact that every single time the doors of Phillips Church were open for a service, Dick Day was present.

My second-most memorable conversation with the principal occurred late in the spring of 1968. The social tensions of the country were increasing; days before, St. Paul's School had erupted in open revolution. I received a note in my mailbox saying the principal wished to see me. As I entered his office and sat under the portrait of John Phillips, Dick began the conversation by thanking me for recommending the need to take steps to avert an explosion at Exeter. He then informed me I was to assume a new, collateral duty as the faculty member whose job it was to avoid The Revolution. Exeter was not going to follow St. Paul's lead.

This was a strong vote of confidence from my boss, but I should have been flabbergasted. The principal told me that he would enthusiastically provide every support. "Anything, anything you want, you can have," I remember him saying. "But should you fail, and this Academy explodes, you will be fired that very day." He smiled, but he meant what he said. I knew then, and in all the days that followed, that I could work for Dick Day. He was clear. He was available. He was supportive.

As the years unfolded, what mattered most about the work, the ministry, the place of Phillips Church in the newly emerging Academy, all came as a result of Dick Day's leadership. Phillips Church was a new kind of place-a place of worship, reflection, meditation, prayer. The worship varied widely. Planning, at least a month in advance, half a dozen student deacons developed each Sunday's service with the school minister or the assistant school minister. The work was arduous, time consuming, exciting and stressful; the results were unpredictable, following ancient forms in new and different ways. The principal was always present and deeply involved. He often said of Phillips Church, "It is the only place in the Academy where one may fail."

After I was asked to become headmaster of Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, MA, Dick Day declared that during the balance of my final year our weekly Thursday morning sessions were to be tutorials on school leadership. He taught me many things, among them that the most important relationship in a school was between the head of the board and the head of the school. An obvious, but important, point, and soon after Bill Andres ceased to chair the Exeter trustees to assume that same responsibility at Dartmouth, Dick Day was asked to depart.

Dick Day embodies Phillips Exeter Academy for me: toughness and tenderness; demand and grace; challenge and affirmation; death and life. He was a professional school master from a different age. He broke new ground. He changed the face of the Academy. Besides his work with Phillips Church, he was responsible for the introduction of coeducation and a dramatic increase in the enrollment of minority students; the School Year Abroad program: the building of the Class of 1945 Library and Love Gymnasium; the founding of Fisher Theater and an expansion of the performing arts.

This is a profoundly significant list of changes and accomplishments. No other single individual, including John Phillips, has equaled it, but what Dick Day gave Exeter cost him his life.

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